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I previously thought that the controller script would only be executed once, when my single page application is loaded.

Now I see that every time I change a view my controller script executes again. I can tell because i had a couple of statements in the script that are not nested in functions. I want them to happen only when the app is first loaded, but they are running when I change views.

The views are configured in my app.js with module.config:

  myModule.config(function ($routeProvider) {
    $routeProvider
      .when('/search', {
        templateUrl: 'views/search.html',
        controller: 'searchCtrl'
      })
      .when...

So, is it normal for the controller script to run when the view changes? Or should I be searching for something I have configured wrong?

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I should have mentioned that the other views also use the searchCtrl controller. –  Michael Stack May 14 at 1:36
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1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote

Yes this is normal. It was(/is) the same for me, however I use angular-ui-router... The solution I chose in order to make sure that the data in the controller would persist was to use a factory, you could use a service or provider just as well. 

"Specialized objects conform to a specific Angular framework API. These objects are one    
 of controllers, directives, filters or animations.

 The injector needs to know how to create these objects. You tell it by registering a 
 "recipe" for creating your object with the injector. There are five recipe types.

 The most verbose, but also the most comprehensive one is a Provider recipe. The 
 remaining four recipe types — Value, Factory, Service and Constant — are just 
 syntactic sugar on top of a provider recipe."

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

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