Angular: reference currently instantiated controller

Question

Is there a way to get reference to the currently instantiated controller object from within the controller's definition? I'd like to $compile a modal and bind that to the same controller that's creating the modal.

Here's a simplified version of what I'd like to do, where THIS_CONTROLLER_INSTANCE is a reference to my controller instance.

angular.module('foo')
.controller('barController', function($scope, $rootScope){
  $scope.openModal = function(){
    var modalEl = $('<div class="modal">Modal stuff here</div>');
    var controller = THIS_CONTROLLER_INSTANCE;
    modalEl.contents().data('$ngControllerController', THIS_CONTROLLER_INSTANCE);

    $compile(modalEl)($scope);
    $('body').append(modalEl);
  }
});

The controller is defined in the dom with the `ng-controller` directive, so it wouldn't be under `$route`, unfortunately — bioball, Jun 02 '14 at 04:38
Have you tried using "this" I'm not sure it will work but worth a shot. — shaunhusain, Jun 02 '14 at 04:54
Actually, `this` in the controller definition is the instantiated controller! Not sure why I didn't think of that before. Case closed. Will edit my post above — bioball, Jun 02 '14 at 05:13

Paul Sweatte · Answer 1 · 2017-07-27T13:08:39.847

As noted above:

The current controller is this. So the solution to my problem is:

angular.module('foo')
.controller('barController', function($scope, $rootScope){
  var self = this;
  $scope.openModal = function(){
    var modalEl = $('<div class="modal">Modal stuff here</div>');
    var controller = self;
    modalEl.contents().data('$ngControllerController', controller);

    $compile(modalEl)($scope);
    $('body').append(modalEl);
  }
});

Angular: reference currently instantiated controller

1 Answers1