Angular reusable template

Question

Is it possible to write reusable ng-template? A lot of my components use exactly the same ng-template.
For example:

<kendo-grid>
    <kendo-grid-column field="group">
        <ng-template kendoGridEditTemplate let-dataItem="dataItem" let-formGroup="form">
            <kendo-dropdownlist #listGroups [data]="groups"
                                textField="title"
                                valueField="id"
                                [valuePrimitive]="true"
                                [filterable]="true"
                                [formControl]="form.get('groupId')">
            </kendo-dropdownlist>
        </ng-template>
    </kendo-grid-column>
</kendo-grid>

I do not want to repeat this template and logic behind in all my components. I could write custom component and shrink this code to:

<kendo-grid>
    <kendo-grid-column field="group">
        <ng-template kendoGridEditTemplate let-dataItem="dataItem" let-formGroup="form">
            <my-custom-component [formControl]="form.get('groupId')">
            </my-custom-component>
        </ng-template>
    </kendo-grid-column>
</kendo-grid>

but I want to do more:

<kendo-grid>
    <kendo-grid-column field="group">
        <ng-template [ngTemplateOutlet]="templateFromAnotherSource">
        </ng-template>
    </kendo-grid-column>
</kendo-grid>

I found this thread and this which describes ngTemplateOutlet, but not how to share templates between multiple components.

Answer 1

The problem is that ng-template has to be compiled. To understand why read Here is what you need to know about dynamic components in Angular.

Now, a template can only be compiled as part of a component right now. So you need to define a component with this template and then you can get access to this template factory either using viewChild or a directive. With viewChild you depend on life-cycle hooks and change detection so I'd go with directive approach. Here is the pseudocode:

@Component() {
   template: '<ng-template requestor>...</ng-template>'
}
class NgTemplateProviderComponent {
   t: TemplateRef;

   register(t) {
      this.t = t;
   }
}

@Directive() {
   selector: 'requestor; 
}
class TemplateRequestor {
   constructor(t: TemplateRef, p: NgTemplateProviderComponent) {
      p.register(t);
   }
}

To learn more about this approach of using a directive to get templateRef read Here is how to get ViewContainerRef before @ViewChild query is evaluated.

Then, you need to get access to the NgTemplateProviderComponent component factory, create its instance to get the templateRef:

class SomeComponent {
   constructor(r: ComponentFactoryResolver, i: Injector) {
       const f = r.resolveComponentFactory(NgTemplateProviderComponent);
       const templateRef =f.create(i).instance.t;
   }
}

and only then you can use ngTemplateOutlet directive to render the template.