Question

In my application I want to provide a checkbox for users to toggle whether the app periodically polls for new data in the background.
I have setup a watch to do the data polling. And i know that if i assign a variable to that watch when created I can call that variable and the watch will be disabled/unregistered.
My issue is that when the users clicks the textbox to on i want the watch to come back to life. I have not found the best way to get that done.
Here is my sample fiddle which somewhat illustrates the issue. I think if i could get it to work there i can rig up the rest of it.
The part that is not working is the part where the watch needs to come back on line:

 if ($scope.counter === 15) {
        $scope.$watch('counter', theWatchFunction);
        $scope.test = "back on";
    }

Answer 1

You cannot simply unregister an watcher and wait for it to automatically re-register again. The moment you run myWatch() everything inside the theWatchFunction will never run again. You can register a new watcher but not inside the theWatchFunction.

You can, for example, re-register the counter watcher on the time watcher: http://jsfiddle.net/bmleite/Lw3Lp/