angular, pass a scope into a function (passing scope as variable?)

Question

I'm trying to pass a scope into a function and I can't seem to get it to work correctly. Here's what I have -

ng-click="clickFunction(scope1)"

//the function 
$scope.clickFunction = function(passedScope){

      passedScope = false;
      console.log($scope.scope1);

So - it's prett straight forward I just want to pass in the scope and set it to false in this click. When I log the scope after changing it hwever it still says it's true. I also tried -

  $scope.passedScope

What I am trying to do is set $scope.scope1 = false. It is set in the top of the controller as true and controls a button nearby by that button having ng-disabled="!scope1", I cant just do a scope1 =!scope! on the click because it goes through a modal to confirm the user wants to complete then runs a modalInstance.result.then(function () { there I then need to set the passed scope to false. I would just call the scope directly, but I'm trying to make a function which I can use across multiple delete functions, thus trying to pass he scope that needs changing to false.

I was thinking I could just pass the scope through the function.

Thanks!

update According to what @Josep showed me today I was able to make a work around by passing the scope as a string like so

   ng-click="clickFunction('scope1')"

and then doing

$scope[passedScope] = false;

Answer 1

If you want to pass the current scope of a part of your view to a function, the way to do it would be:

ng-click="clickFunction(this)"

But then in your function you should be treating that scope like this:

$scope.clickFunction = function(passedScope){
   passedScope.somePropertyOfTheScope = false;//<---Notice the difference with the code that you are suggesting.

You can't set the scope to false, you can set one of its properties to false, but not the scope itself. That wouldn't make any sense because scope is an object that holds a set of properties, events and functions. Some of them inherited from its scope ancestors up to $rootScope, and some of them are custom.

Maybe what you are trying to do is to pass one of the properties of the scope as a parameter of a function, so that you can change it in that function. However, in javascript the only way to pass a parameter by reference is to pass the object and update one of its properties, if you pass a boolean property to the function, then you will be passing the value of that boolean property, not the reference. Please have a look at this: Pass Variables by Reference in Javascript.

Answer 2

As an alternative to Josep's answer (which helped me find it out), you could simply call like this:

ng-click="clickFunction()"

And then in your function you can refer the current scope with this:

$scope.clickFunction = function() {
   this.somePropertyOfTheScope = false;

   //...
}

This is very useful when using ng-include that creates a new scope, so clickFunction is actually at parent scope.