Access form from within Angular $mdDialog

Question

I am using an Angular 1.5 Material Design $mdDialog in the recommended way, using controllerAs: "dialog". In the template I have a form: <form name="fooForm". Within the template I can access the form with no problem, e.g. ng-disabled="fooForm.$invalid || fooForm.$submitted".

But how do I access that form from within the $mdDialog controller? From what I read, I would expect to be able to do this:

    const doFoo = () => {
        if (this.fooForm.$dirty) {

Here this is the dialog controller.

But I get an error: TypeError: Cannot read property '$dirty' of undefined. And sure enough, if I put a breakpoint in the code, the controller has no fooForm property.

I've tried using $scope as well, but when I put a breakpoint in the code $scope has no fooForm property either.

Here's my dialog template:

<md-dialog aria-label="FooBar">
  <md-toolbar>
    <div class="md-toolbar-tools">
      <h2>FooBar</h2>
      <span flex></span>
      <md-button class="md-icon-button" ng-click="dialog.cancel()">
        <md-icon>close</md-icon>
      </md-button>
    </div>
  </md-toolbar>
  <form name="fooForm" ng-submit="dialog.ok()" novalidate>
    <md-dialog-content>
      <div layout="column" layout-padding>
        <h2 class="md-headline">Foo</h2>
        <div layout="row" layout-xs="column">
          ...
      </div>
    </md-dialog-content>
    <md-dialog-actions>
      <md-button class="md-primary" type="submit" ng-disabled="fooForm.$invalid || fooForm.$submitted">
        OK
      </md-button>
      <md-button ng-click="dialog.cancel()">
        Cancel
      </md-button>
    </md-dialog-actions>
  </form>
</md-dialog>

How do I access a form in an $mdDialog from the dialog controller?

Answer 1

you need to assign the form to the Scope of the Controller. Do this by changing the form name from fooForm to dialog.fooForm.

<form name="dialog.fooForm" ng-submit="dialog.ok()" novalidate>

Answer 2

1. Scope existed and still exist disregarding controllerAs. When you use 'controllerAs xxx' that just mean - put my controller into scope and name it xxx. You can use them together:

function controller($scope) {
  var vm = this;

  vm.click = function() {}

  $scope.click = function() {}
}

<button ng-click="xxx.click()" ...
<button ng-click="click()" ...

2. Now if you write ng-click="whatever();smth();"angular will use $parse(expression)(scope) to parse this expression.

3. Now you write form name="formName" -- angular will use $parse("formName").assign(scope, form); and put it to scope.

4. $parse is quite clever and can easily handle nested properties, to put form to your controller (as xxx): <form name="xxx.myForm"></form>