Passing arguments to angularjs filters

From what I understand you can't pass an arguments to a filter function (when using the 'filter' filter). What you would have to do is to write a custom filter, sth like this:

.filter('weDontLike', function(){

return function(items, name){

    var arrayToReturn = [];        
    for (var i=0; i<items.length; i++){
        if (items[i].name != name) {
            arrayToReturn.push(items[i]);
        }
    }

    return arrayToReturn;
};

Here is the working jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/pkozlowski_opensource/myr4a/1/

The other simple alternative, without writing custom filters is to store a name to filter out in a scope and then write:

$scope.weDontLike = function(item) {
  return item.name != $scope.name;
};

Actually there is another (maybe better solution) where you can use the angular's native 'filter' filter and still pass arguments to your custom filter.

Consider the following code:

<div ng-repeat="group in groups">
    <li ng-repeat="friend in friends | filter:weDontLike(group.enemy.name)">
        <span>{{friend.name}}</span>
    <li>
</div>

To make this work you just define your filter as the following:

$scope.weDontLike = function(name) {
    return function(friend) {
        return friend.name != name;
    }
}

As you can see here, weDontLike actually returns another function which has your parameter in its scope as well as the original item coming from the filter.

It took me 2 days to realise you can do this, haven't seen this solution anywhere yet.

Checkout Reverse polarity of an angular.js filter to see how you can use this for other useful operations with filter.