initialize a scope variable with angularJs

Question

I'm always using ng-init="controllerFunction()" to get data from the server and display it on a table, chart or anything else and it needs to get called on every page loading.

Now using ng-init is doing the job but is it the best practice ?

Answer 1

ng-init is mainly used to pass data to an init method, for example razor data (ng-init="someControllerFunction(@Model.ServerSideData)). If you don't pass any data you can just do it directly in your controller:

function myCtrl($scope) {
    function myInitFunction(){
        // fetch data etc.
    }

    myInitFunction();
}

This way you don't expose the init function and is nicely encapsulated inside your controller.

Answer 2

The documentation clearly states (in a big red alert) that ngInit has only a few focused use-cases, and should not be used outside of these scenarios

This directive can be abused to add unnecessary amounts of logic into your templates. There are only a few appropriate uses of ngInit, such as for aliasing special properties of ngRepeat, as seen in the demo below; and for injecting data via server side scripting. Besides these few cases, you should use controllers rather than ngInit to initialize values on a scope.