Check existence of attribute in AngularJs Directive

The way to do this is to check for the existence of the attributes within the link function's attrs parameter, and assign this to variables within your directive's isolate scope.

scope:{},
link: function(scope, element, attrs){
  scope.status = 'status' in attrs;
},

This should work without having to use an if statement within your link function.

The way to do what you want is by looking at the attribute object in the link function:

link: 
  function(scope, element, attrs) {
    if("status" in attrs)
       //do something
  }