How can I set a dynamic model name in AngularJS?

You can use something like this scopeValue[field], but if your field is in another object you will need another solution.

To solve all kind of situations, you can use this directive:

this.app.directive('dynamicModel', ['$compile', '$parse', function ($compile, $parse) {
    return {
        restrict: 'A',
        terminal: true,
        priority: 100000,
        link: function (scope, elem) {
            var name = $parse(elem.attr('dynamic-model'))(scope);
            elem.removeAttr('dynamic-model');
            elem.attr('ng-model', name);
            $compile(elem)(scope);
        }
    };
}]);

Html example:

<input dynamic-model="'scopeValue.' + field" type="text">

To make the answer provided by @abourget more complete, the value of scopeValue[field] in the following line of code could be undefined. This would result in an error when setting subfield:

<textarea ng-model="scopeValue[field][subfield]"></textarea>

One way of solving this problem is by adding an attribute ng-focus="nullSafe(field)", so your code would look like the below:

<textarea ng-focus="nullSafe(field)" ng-model="scopeValue[field][subfield]"></textarea>

Then you define nullSafe( field ) in a controller like the below:

$scope.nullSafe = function ( field ) {
  if ( !$scope.scopeValue[field] ) {
    $scope.scopeValue[field] = {};
  }
};

This would guarantee that scopeValue[field] is not undefined before setting any value to scopeValue[field][subfield].

Note: You can't use ng-change="nullSafe(field)" to achieve the same result because ng-change happens after the ng-model has been changed, which would throw an error if scopeValue[field] is undefined.

What I ended up doing is something like this:

In the controller:

link: function($scope, $element, $attr) {
  $scope.scope = $scope;  // or $scope.$parent, as needed
  $scope.field = $attr.field = '_suffix';
  $scope.subfield = $attr.sub_node;
  ...

so in the templates I could use totally dynamic names, and not just under a certain hard-coded element (like in your "Answers" case):

<textarea ng-model="scope[field][subfield]"></textarea>

Hope this helps.

http://jsfiddle.net/DrQ77/

You can simply put javascript expression in ng-model.