Can AngularJS directive pick up class name from dynamic content?

Question

http://jsfiddle.net/xKU5R/

In the above case, I'm expecting elements with cls class to be picked up with the same behavior from within ng-repeat (ng-bind-html-unsafe), and explicitly set one.

<div ng-app="appp">
   <div ng-controller="Ctrl">
      <ul>
         <li ng-repeat="r in data" ng-bind-html-unsafe="r.alink"></li>
      </ul>
      <div class="cls">External</div>
   </div>
</div>

function Ctrl($scope) {
    $scope.data = [
        {alink: '<span><a class="cls">One</a></span>'},
        {alink: '<span><a class="cls">Two</a></span>'}
    ];
}

angular.module('appp', [])
.directive('cls', function() {
    return {
        restrict: 'C',
        replace: true,
        scope: true,
        link: function(scope, element, attrs) {
            element.bind('click', function() {
                alert('Aha!');
            });
        }
    }
});

I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong here?

Answer 1

The problem is that the new HTML is not being compiled by Angular. The simplest solution may be to manually compile the dynamic content using the $compile service. Do this in a custom directive and replace ng-bind-html-unsafe="r.alink" with something like htmlinsert="r.alink". Here is how that directive could be coded:

angular.module('appp', [])
.directive('htmlinsert',function($compile){
    return {
        scope: {
            htmlinsert: '='    
        },
        link: function(scope,element,attrs){
            var compiledElement = $compile(scope.htmlinsert)(scope);
            element.append(compiledElement); 
        }
    }
});

The reference to the html string is passed using isolate scope binding, and is then compiled before being appended to the current iteration of the repeated DOM element.

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/sh0ber/CLEqc/