Best practice of RestAngular

Question

So I've started to work on an own project, where I'm in the middle of developing the front-end of my website. I started out with an PHP Laravel back-end and I've setted up an API service for my database.

With a hybrid app in mind, i started using angularjs for my front-end web application. For the communication with my API using REST, I've came across restangular, which is pretty nice because it was exactly what I hoped for.

There is only one issue that bothers me, there is no real "guide" how to setup a maintainable module/factory/provider/service to replicate your api with a system that stores the data in local storage or setup simple system where you could inject the "Model" into an controller and just do Model->getAll() to fetching all models.

Because I'm new to angularJS, and therefor my knowedge on how to appeach this, is fairly limited. So far I've made this:

main application

var client = angular.module('clientApp', ['angulartics', 'angulartics.google.analytics', 'ngRoute', 'restangular']);

client.config(['$routeProvider', function($routeProvider){
    $routeProvider
        .when('/', {
            controller: 'flongsController',
            templateUrl: '/client_partials/Homepage.html'
        })
        .when('/flongs/:slug', {
            controller: 'flongsController',
            templateUrl: 'client_partials/Flong.html'
        })
        .otherwise({
            redirectTo: '/'
        });
}]);

flongsController

client.controller('flongsController', ['$scope', 'Restangular', '$routeParams', function ($scope, Restangular, $routeParams) {
    //controller variables
    var baseFlongs = Restangular.all('flongs');

    $scope.flongs = {};

    init();

    function init() {
        baseFlongs.getList().then(function(flongs){
            $scope.flongs = flongs;
        });
    }

}]);

So, my question is simple:

How can i improve this code so that its more efficient and more maintainable?

Thanks in advance, Nick van der Meij

Answer 1

First of all do not use service logic on the controller, instead use angular services for this purpose.

Let me share you how I build my projects,

First build Restangular Service :

angular.module('example').factory('exampleService', ['Restangular', function(Restangular){

    // this is service object with list of methods in it
    // this object will be used by controller
    var service = {
        getExamples: getExamples,
        getExample: getExample
    };

    // get examples from server by using Restangular
    function getExamples(){
        return Restangular.all('examples').getList();
    }

    // get example with given id from server by using Restangular
    function getExample(exampleId){
        return Restangular.one('examples', exampleId).get();
    }

    return service;

}]);

here we build exampleService now let's inject it into a controller

angular.controller('ExampleCtrl', ['exampleService', function(exampleService){

    // get examples by using exampleService
    exampleService.getExamples().then(function (examples) {
        $scope.examples = examples;
    });

    // get example with given id by using exampleService
    exampleService.getExample('1234').then(function (example) {
        $scope.example = example;
    });

}]);

This is how I use it basically. For more advanced usage you can look the examples in Restangular Github Page.