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i see angularjs highly suggested not to do any dom manipulation in the controller, only setting the state of the scope, example pulling data from ajax etc,

https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/controller

what about directives controllers with a isolated scope does it make sense to set functions on the isolated scope to do dom manipulation

example 

controller:function($scope,$element){
    $scope.editDom = function(){
        $element.someThing();
    }
}
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2  
directives are made for dom manipulation. –  phylax Apr 30 at 15:43
    
@phylax i know what directives are made for, the questions is if adding methods to isolated scope to do dom manipulation is good practice –  joelkaufman Apr 30 at 15:45
    
Do you want to export a dom manipulating function from your directive controller to be called from your controller? –  phylax Apr 30 at 15:51
    
Keep it out of the controller. Even if that controller is within a directive, it's still a controller. That being said, you can chain on to the directive. –  tymeJV Apr 30 at 15:51
    
@phylax i want to wrap some dom manipulation logic to be able to call later , where is to place to save this method ? –  joelkaufman Apr 30 at 15:55
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2 Answers

up vote 0 down vote

I'll try an answer with putting the function in a 'private' variable of the directive:

angular.module('...', [])
  .directive('...', function () {
    var
    myDOMManipulations = function (…) {…};

    return {
      scope: {},
      controller: function ($scope) {
        myDOMManipulations(…);
      }
    };
  });

It all depends on what the function needs to do and when it should be called.

Mostly i put even the controller or link function in a private variable so the return { … } gets minimal. For functions it usually doesn't matter where they are defined. Besides if the function shouzld be exported as an API.

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up vote 0 down vote

Usually I try to split directive logic into pure logic, which goes into controller, and dom manipulation logic which goes into link function.

In cases where I need to put methods which do dom manipulation on scope I declare those functions in the directive link function.

This is some what artificial separation of logic, for which the main driver is writing unit tests as then I can easily write tests that checks the controller.

In cases where my entire logic is dom manipulation and I don't need to expose api to other directives (via require) I don't have controller at all, only link.

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