Document how to access the state from controllers and templates

[dandv]

Maybe this is too obvious to merit documentation, but as someone new to ui-router, I can't seem to find how to access the state from a template so I can ngSwitch based on it. Likewise, how does one access the state from a controller? Is this documented somewhere? Thanks!

NB: I found $state.current.name available in controllers but this seems undocumented.

How about templates? Do I need to specifically expose $state.current.name into $scope?

[aclave1]

I think I know what you're asking for. If you inject $stateParams into your controller, you can get access to your state.

[dandv]

I'm already injecting $state like this:

app.controller('MapCtrl', ['$rootScope', '$scope', '$state', 'map', function MapCtrl($rootScope, $scope, $state, map) {
  $scope.state = $state.current.name;
}]);

Then in the template I have:

<div ng-switch on="state">
  <div ng-switch-when="book">
  ...

Is there a better way to enable the template to make decisions based on the state?

[brandonjp]

Hmmm @dandv using ng-switch should work just fine. But I'm guessing it's because your MapCtrl isn't re-evaluating it's scope when the $state changes. My explanation is not gonna be pretty, but I at least know how to make it work for you...

SHORT ANSWER: In your controller, if you add the full $state to your scope (like so: $scope.state = $state instead of $scope.state = $state.current.name), then the switch statement works fine using ng-switch on="state.current.name"

Why the difference? I think it has something to do with when the scope is evaluated. Perhaps, adding it as you did, you're only adding the string value of $state.current.name to your $scope so the controller is not re-evaluating that assignment except for when it first initialized. But by using $scope.state = $state then on each tick the scope is resupplying the latest value of $state.current.name

I don't fully know... but here's a messy/bloated code sample where I was trying to understand it better: http://codepen.io/brandonjp/pen/dguaj

[nateabele]

These are question related to general Angular concepts, not UI Router.