Problem space
I have a problem where I'm submitting a form based on criteria being fulfilled, rather than having a form submission button.
Let's say I have 3 drop downs, the first two are grouped but one needs to be selected, meaning I can select one or the other but I can't leave them empty, the 3rd one is a required field.
After that, the page automatically fetches in results.
Lets say I have checkboxes and a few more dropdowns. Any future selections on the 3 dropdowns mentioned, checkboxes, and dropdowns automatically filters the results.
What I know
Now after reading angular documentation, I was checking up on $dirty, $pristine and operations on both, like $setDirty and $setPristine; however, it seems that this is for a FormController
So I'm assuming this is useful for an entire scope. I didn't see any inclination that I can figure out for selected scopes.
What I have so far
So basically, I was hoping that I'd be making use of the scope's tracking features, but I don't know much about it. I created a single controller for my application and a single scope, since that's what seemed easiest for me. I have 3rd party plugins that play a role into the scope like:
$scope.3rdpartyConfig = { prop1: [], prop2: getData() }
I don't think something like that would be useful in checking to see form submission if I was going to check the $dirty state of my form.
Then I thought about the old way I used to do things, but "angularlizing" it:
so I'd have something like:
<input type="checkbox" ng-model="state.Checked" ng-change="checkIfWeCanSubmitThenSubmit()" id="ng-change-example1" />
So I'd be having ng-changes and ng-clicks all over my html form, hitting that function, where the function would look like this pseudocode:
$scope.checkIfWeCanSubmitThenSubmit= function() {
var validated = false;
//check to see if dropdown1 or dropdown2 are selected
//check to see if dropdown3 is selected
// add more here per requirement
//if the above are true, then validated = true
if (validated)
{
//add dropdown4 and 5, and checkbox groups into filter
}
submit();
}
But I was thinking this isn't the angular way of doing things since this certainly isn't facilitated.
I was hoping that the scope would offer some kind of way, where I can check to see what pieces of my scope is dirty or not before I can submit and fetch data, or if there is a better way than appending this function to every html element; like having some kind of scope tracker that I can check up on and watch.
Which reminds me, I don't want to have a series of $scope.$watch either, its just that it'd be way too much work to bind to every piece of html code, unless there's way to watch the scope of a collection of specific scope variables, then, I wouldn't mind.
like (forgive the pseudocode):
$scope.$watch('dropdown1, dropdown2, dropdown4', function(dirty, pristine)
{
if (dirty)
{ blah blah blah }
});
Edit (2/28/2013):
I tried doing it this way:
$scope.masterCriteria =
[
{ DropDown1: $scope.AppModel.Dropdown1},
{ DropDown2: $scope.AppModel.Dropdown2 },
{ DropDown3: $scope.AppModel.Dropdown3 },
{ Checkbox1: $scope.AppModel.Checkbox1 },
{ Checkbox2: $scope.AppModel.Checkbox2 }
];
$scope.$watch('masterCriteria', function (newVal) {
if (newVal) { logger.info("did I change?"); }
}, true);
The watcher detected nothing, and any values I changed to the scope of AppModel wasn't being picked up in the $watch. Was worth a try, still trying to figure this out.
