How to use ng-repeat without an html element

Update: If you are using Angular 1.2+, use ng-repeat-start. See @jmagnusson's answer.

Otherwise, how about putting the ng-repeat on tbody? (AFAIK, it is okay to have multiple <tbody>s in a single table.)

<tbody ng-repeat="row in array">
  <tr ng-repeat="item in row">
     <td>{{item}}</td>
  </tr>
</tbody>

As of AngularJS 1.2 there's a directive called ng-repeat-start that does exactly what you ask for. See my answer in this question for a description of how to use it.


If you use ng > 1.2, here is an example of using ng-repeat-start/end without generating unnecessary tags:

<html>
  <head>
    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.23/angular.min.js"></script>
    <script>
      angular.module('mApp', []);
    </script>
  </head>
  <body ng-app="mApp">
    <table border="1" width="100%">
      <tr ng-if="0" ng-repeat-start="elem in [{k: 'A', v: ['a1','a2']}, {k: 'B', v: ['b1']}, {k: 'C', v: ['c1','c2','c3']}]"></tr>

      <tr>
        <td rowspan="{{elem.v.length}}">{{elem.k}}</td>
        <td>{{elem.v[0]}}</td>
      </tr>
      <tr ng-repeat="v in elem.v" ng-if="!$first">
        <td>{{v}}</td>
      </tr>

      <tr ng-if="0" ng-repeat-end></tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>

The important point: for tags used for ng-repeat-start and ng-repeat-end set ng-if="0", to let not be inserted in the page. In this way the inner content will be handled exactly as it is in knockoutjs (using commands in <!--...-->), and there will be no garbage.


You might want to flatten the data within your controller:

function MyCtrl ($scope) {
  $scope.myData = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]];
  $scope.flattened = function () {
    var flat = [];
    $scope.myData.forEach(function (item) {
      flat.concat(item);
    }
    return flat;
  }
}

And then in the HTML:

<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr ng-repeat="item in flattened()"><td>{{item}}</td></tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Tags:

Angularjs

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