AngularJS with PHP (forms and ajax)

Question

I just started learning AngularJS and will be using PHP for the backend.

I got the basics of Angular working, but now I'm at the point of form submission. Now I'm thinking that I could just do an $.ajax({...}); call to a PHP file and include that function at the bottom of my view.

However, I see there are other ways using controllers, which I'm researching; I just want to know if that would be considered bad practice or if there is a simple way to transition from one method to the other.

Thanks.

EDIT:

Here's what I did now and it's working great in my opinion. Doesn't hurt the integrity of Angular, the form submits, and all is good. Is there a downside to this:

function submitNewPatient(){

        $.ajax({
              url: 'ajax/patients/new_patient.php',
              type: 'post',
              data: $("#new_patient_form").serialize(),
              success: function() 
              {
                  $("#new_patient_form")[0].reset();                                          
              }, error: function()
              {
                  alert('something went wrong');
              }
        });
}

Answer 1

You'll want to look into the $http method.

Here's an example:

$http.post('api/user', {params: {id: '5'}
  }).success(function(data, status, headers, config) {
    // Do something successful.
  }).error(function(data, status, headers, config) {
    // Handle the error
});

Along with .get the $http service has .head, .post, .delete, .put, .jsonp. In your case $http.post, the params and URL in the example above evaluate to api/user?id=5

Also, forms in Angular come with an ng-submit directive which is very useful for calling a function on submission. The ng-submit prevents the browser from its default POST action. This way you can use it to call a function on the controller attached to the view.

<form ng-submit="sendForm()" ng-controller="FormSubmission">
   <button>send form!</button>
</form>