Question

What is the easiest way to pass an AngularJS scope variable from directive to controller? All of the examples that I’ve seen seem so complex, isn’t there a way I can access a controller from a directive, and set one of it’s scope variables?

Answer 1

Edited on 2014/8/25:
Here was where I forked it.

Thanks @anvarik.

Here is the JSFiddle. I forgot where I forked this. But this is a good example showing you the difference between = and @

<div ng-controller="MyCtrl">
    <h2>Parent Scope</h2>
    <input ng-model="foo"> <i>// Update to see how parent scope interacts with component scope</i>    
    <br><br>
    <!-- attribute-foo binds to a DOM attribute which is always
    a string. That is why we are wrapping it in curly braces so
    that it can be interpolated. -->
    <my-component attribute-foo="{{foo}}" binding-foo="foo"
        isolated-expression-foo="updateFoo(newFoo)" >
        <h2>Attribute</h2>
        <div>
            <strong>get:</strong> {{isolatedAttributeFoo}}
        </div>
        <div>
            <strong>set:</strong> <input ng-model="isolatedAttributeFoo">
            <i>// This does not update the parent scope.</i>
        </div>
        <h2>Binding</h2>
        <div>
            <strong>get:</strong> {{isolatedBindingFoo}}
        </div>
        <div>
            <strong>set:</strong> <input ng-model="isolatedBindingFoo">
            <i>// This does update the parent scope.</i>
        </div>
        <h2>Expression</h2>    
        <div>
            <input ng-model="isolatedFoo">
            <button class="btn" ng-click="isolatedExpressionFoo({newFoo:isolatedFoo})">Submit</button>
            <i>// And this calls a function on the parent scope.</i>
        </div>
    </my-component>
</div>

var myModule = angular.module('myModule', [])
    .directive('myComponent', function () {
        return {
            restrict:'E',
            scope:{
                /* NOTE: Normally I would set my attributes and bindings
                to be the same name but I wanted to delineate between
                parent and isolated scope. */                
                isolatedAttributeFoo:'@attributeFoo',
                isolatedBindingFoo:'=bindingFoo',
                isolatedExpressionFoo:'&'
            }        
        };
    })
    .controller('MyCtrl', ['$scope', function ($scope) {
        $scope.foo = 'Hello!';
        $scope.updateFoo = function (newFoo) {
            $scope.foo = newFoo;
        }
    }]);