Angular ng-click event delegation

It seems angular doesn't do event delegation with repeaters. Someone opened an issue on github about it. The argument is if it actually leads to better performance.

There might be a workaround but it would require jQuery. It consists of creating a special directive to be used on a parent element and register the listener on its dom node.

Here's an example, that is passed a function name to be called when a children node is clicked, and is also passed a selector to help identify which children nodes to listen to. Since angular's jquery implementation only gives us the bind method - which is limited to registering event listeners to the actual element - we need to load jQuery to have access to either the on or delegate method.

HTML

<ul click-children='fun' selector='li'>
    <li ng-repeat="s in ss" data-index="{{$index}}">{{s}}</li>
</ul>

The function defined is defined in the controller and it expects to be passed an index

$scope.fun = function(index){
    console.log('hi from controller', index, $scope.ss[index]);      
};

The directive uses $parse to convert an expression into a function that will be called from the event listener.

app.directive('clickChildren', function($parse){
  return {
    restrict: 'A',
    link: function(scope, element, attrs){       
      var selector = attrs.selector;
      var fun = $parse(attrs.clickChildren);   
      element.on('click', selector, function(e){       
        // no need to create a jQuery object to get the attribute 
        var idx = e.target.getAttribute('data-index');        
        fun(scope)(idx);        
      });
    }
  };
});

Plunker: http://plnkr.co/edit/yWCLvRSLCeshuw4j58JV?p=preview

---

Note: Functions can be delegated to directives using isolate scopes {fun: '&'}, which is worth a look, but this increases complexity.

Working off of jm-'s example here, I wrote a more concise and flexible version of this directive. Thought I'd share. Credit goes to jm- ;)

My version attempts to call the function name as $scope[ fn ]( e, data ), or fails gracefully.

It passes an optional json object from the element which was clicked. This allows you to use Angular expressions and pass numerous properties to the method being called.

HTML

<ul delegate-clicks="handleMenu" delegate-selector="a">
  <li ng-repeat="link in links">
    <a href="#" data-ng-json='{ "linkId": {{link.id}} }'>{{link.title}}</a>
  </li>
</ul>

Javascript

Controller Method

$scope.handleMenu = function($event, data) {
  $event.preventDefault();
  $scope.activeLinkId = data.linkId;
  console.log('handleMenu', data, $scope);
}

Directive Constructor

// The delegateClicks directive delegates click events to the selector provided in the delegate-selector attribute.
// It will try to call the function provided in the delegate-clicks attribute.
// Optionally, the target element can assign a data-ng-json attribute which represents a json object to pass into the function being called. 
// Example json attribute: <li data-ng-json='{"key":"{{scopeValue}}" }'></li>
// Use case: Delegate click events within ng-repeater directives.

app.directive('delegateClicks', function(){
  return function($scope, element, attrs) {
    var fn = attrs.delegateClicks;
    element.on('click', attrs.delegateSelector, function(e){
      var data = angular.fromJson( angular.element( e.target ).data('ngJson') || undefined );
      if( typeof $scope[ fn ] == "function" ) $scope[ fn ]( e, data );
    });
  };
});

I'd love to hear feedback if anyone wishes to contribute.

I didn't test the handleMenu method since I extracted this from a more complex application.