Angular JS: how to bind to promises

Question

I am trying to bind a promise to a view. I don't know if you can do that directly, but that's what I'm attempting to do. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Note: the source is a little contrived with the timeout and uses static data, but that's to make the code easier to diagnose.

EDIT: JSFiddle Page: http://jsfiddle.net/YQwaf/27/

EDIT: SOLUTION: It turned out you can directly bind promises. I had two problems with my original code:

1. Using setTimeout() instead of angular's $timeout was a problem. Angular doesn't know it needs to refresh the UI when the timeout is triggered ( You could solve this with $scope.$apply inside setTimeout, or you can just use $timeout )
2. Binding to a function that returned a promise was a problem. If it gets called a second time, it makes yet another promise. Better is to set a scope variable to the promise and only create a new promise as needed. (In my case, this was calling $scope.$watch on the Country Code)

HTML:

<div ng:controller="addressValidationController">
    Region Code <select ng:model="regionCode" ng:options="r.code as r.name for r in getRegions()"/>
    Country Code<select ng:model="countryCode"><option value="US">United States</option><option value="CA">Canada</option></select>
</div>

JS:

function addressValidationController($scope, $q) {
    var regions = {
        US: [{code: 'WI',name: 'Wisconsin'}, {code: 'MN',name: 'Minnesota'}], 
        CA: [{code: 'ON',name: 'Ontario'}]
    };
    $scope.getRegions = function () {
        var deferred = $q.defer();
        setTimeout(function () {
            var countryRegions = regions[$scope.countryCode];
            console.log(countryRegions);
            if(countryRegions === undefined) {
                deferred.resolve([]);
            } else {
                deferred.resolve(countryRegions);
            }
        }, 1000);
        return deferred.promise;
    };
}

Answer 1

As of Angular 1.2, you can't use promises in templates directly anymore.
Instead, you need to put the result into $scope inside then, like you normally would—no magic.

As a temporary workaround to get the old behavior, you can call

$parseProvider.unwrapPromises(true)

but this feature will be removed later on, so don't depend on it.

Answer 2

WARNING: this answer was accurate when it was written, but as of 1.2 the Angular template engine does not handle promises transparently! -- @Malvolio

Yes the template engine (and expressions) handle promises transparently, but I would assign the promise to a scope property in the controller and not call everytime a function that returns a new promise (I think it's your problem, resolved promise is lost because a new promise is returned everytime).

JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/YQwaf/36/

HTML:

<div ng:controller="addressValidationController">
    Region Code <select ng:model="regionCode" ng:options="r.code as r.name for r in regions"/>
    Country Code<select ng:model="countryCode"><option value="US">United States</option><option value="CA">Canada</option></select>
</div>

JS:

function addressValidationController($scope, $q, $timeout) {
    var regions = {
        US: [{
            code: 'WI',
            name: 'Wisconsin'},
        {
            code: 'MN',
            name: 'Minnesota'}],
        CA: [{
            code: 'ON',
            name: 'Ontario'}]
    };

    function getRegions(countryCode) {
        console.log('getRegions: ' + countryCode);
        var deferred = $q.defer();
        $timeout(function() {
            var countryRegions = regions[countryCode];
            if (countryRegions === undefined) {
                console.log('resolve empty');
                deferred.resolve([]);
            } else {
                console.log('resolve');
                deferred.resolve(countryRegions);
            }
        }, 1000);
        return deferred.promise;
    };

    $scope.regions = [];

    // Manage country changes:
    $scope.$watch('countryCode', function(countryCode) {
        if (angular.isDefined(countryCode)) {
            $scope.regions = getRegions(countryCode);
        }
        else {
            $scope.regions = [];
        }
    });
}​

Answer 3

As of Angular 1.3 - $parseProvider.unwrapPromises(true) will no longer work.

Instead, you should unwrap the promises directly:

myApiMethod().then(function(value){
    $scope.item = value; 
});

Note that promise unwrapping will still work with ngResource as usual.

Answer 4

returning a reference to the scope variable holding the list should suffice.

function addressValidationController($scope,$timeout) {
    var regions = {
        US: [{code: 'WI',name: 'Wisconsin'}, {code: 'MN',name: 'Minnesota'}], 
        CA: [{code: 'ON',name: 'Ontario'}]
    };

    $scope._regions = [];

    $scope.getRegions = function () {

        $timeout(function () {
            var countryRegions = regions[$scope.countryCode];
            console.log(countryRegions);
            if(countryRegions === undefined) {
                $scope._regions = []
            } else {
                $scope._regions = countryRegions
            }
        }, 1000);

        return $scope._regions;
    };
}