I've seen controllers written in two ways:
1)
myModule.controller('myController', function myController($scope) {
...
});
2)
myModule.controller('myController', function($scope) {
...
});
in method 2, the function is NOT named. Can someone please explain the difference here to me and when one method should be used over the other?
From AngularJS point of view there is no real difference between the two, especially when you inline the controller's (or services', or filters' etc) declaration like in your example.
The only difference you would be if you wanted to define the controller below registering it into a module, like this:
myModule.controller('myController', myController);
function myController($scope) {
...
});
… since this construction is only possible because of the hoisting of the function's body that occurs in the case of named function.
If you want to learn more about the named vs anonymous functions, there is a good explanation here: var functionName = function() {} vs function functionName() {}
Edit:
Worth mentioning, there seems to be a preference to use named functions for increasing readability of the code, see AngularJS styleguide on this: https://github.com/johnpapa/angular-styleguide/blob/master/a1/README.md#style-y024 - they also prefer to define stuff using the "hoisting method" as you can see in all the examples. It's not some only correct way, but it is a way ;) Consistency is the key.
