Developer Guide: Angular HTML Compiler: Understanding Angular Directives

An angular directive is a custom HTML attribute that angular knows how to process. You add them to a template element like any other attribute. Angular directives all have a ng: prefix. In the following example, the angular directive (ng:controller) is a div tag:

    <div ng:controller>

You use angular directives to modify DOM element properties. The element you modify can be an existing HTML element type or a custom DOM element type that you created. You can use any number of directives per element.

You add angular directives to a standard HTML tag as in the following example, in which we have added the ng:click directive to a button tag:

    <button ng:model="button1" ng:click="foo()">Click This</button>

In the example above, name is the standard HTML attribute, and ng:click is the angular directive. The ng:click directive lets you implement custom behavior in an associated controller function.

In the next example, we add the ng:bind directive to a <span> tag:

    <span ng:bind="1+2"></span>

The ng:bind directive tells angular to set up data binding between the data model and the view for the specified expression. When the angular compiler encounters an ng:bind directive in a template, it passes the attribute value to the ng:bind function, which in turn sets up the data binding. On any change to the expression in the model, the view is updated to display the span text with the changed expression value.

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