Is it possible to fetch templates from $templateCache when configuring my $routeProvider?

Question

My intention is to load all the templates of my web app with one single call to an external JSON file containing a list of all the template names and values.

I am currently loading these templates on the run phase of my app:

app.run(function ($http, $templateCache) {
    $http.get('/templates/all.json').success(function (data) {
        var i;
        for (i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
            $templateCache.put(data[i].name, data[i].template);
        }
    });
});

However, the Angular.js config phase executes before the run phase, so when I intend to load from the templateCache:

app.config(function($routeProvider, $locationProvider) {
    //App routing
    $routeProvider.
        //Homepage
        when('/', {templateUrl: 'home.html'}).

        //My schedule
        when('/my-schedule', {templateUrl: 'my-schedule.html'});
});

Angular tries to load home.html from the server, because the $templateCache hasn't been filled yet.

Suppose that all.json contains the templates for home.html and my-schedule.html for the prevous example.

Is it possible to fill $templateCache before configuring the app's $routeProvider?

Answer 1

I had the same problem and after couple of hours spent on research I realized that I was asking myself the wrong question, since what I wanted to do wasn't necessarily loading templates using XHR but just being sure that they're cached and stored in one file.

I have grunt task compiling all my JADE templates to HTML and wrapping them in one big angular module which is loaded as a separate JS file called templates.js. All these things are done automatically in background, so after you've spent 10 minutes configuring it, you can actually forget the monkey work and focus on the code / markup.

(for the sake of brevity I'm going to skip the JADE part here)

1. edit html file
2. grunt-contrib-watch task:
   1. catches the change
   2. generates angular modules with $templateCache enabled
3. my website is reloaded (using liveReload)

This is how I approached the problem using Grunt.js / JADE and html2js:

Head section of my index.jade file

  script(src='js/modernizr.js')
  script(src='js/vendor.js')
  script(src='js/templates.js')
  script(src='js/app.js')

Beginning of the main application module (using CoffeeScript here)

'use strict'
# Declare app level module which depends on filters, and services
App = angular.module('app', [ 
  'templates' // just include the module and forget it
  'foo'
  'bar']).config(...)

GruntFile.json (grunt.js config)

I needed to remove ca 80% of the code and left just tasks related to templates, consider it just a draft.

module.exports = (grunt)->
  imports = grunt.file.readJSON 'app/imports.json'
  grunt.initConfig
    pkg: grunt.file.readJSON 'package.json'



    watch:
      options:
        livereload: yes


      templates:
        files: 'app/**/*.jade'
        tasks: ['buildTemplates']

    jade:
      default:
        options:
          client: no
          wrap: no
          basePath: 'app/'
          pretty: yes
        files:
          'public/': ['app/**/*.jade']

    html2js:
      options:
        module: 'templates'
        base: 'public/'

      main:
        src: 'public/partials/**/*.html'
        dest: 'public/js/templates.js'


    connect:
      server:
        options:
          port: 8081
          base: 'public'
          keepalive: yes


      livereload:
        options:
          port: 8081
          base: 'public'
          # middleware: (connect, options)-> [lrSnippet, folderMount(connect, options.base)]

    copy:
      assets:
        files:[
          src:['**'], dest:'public/', cwd:'assets/', expand: yes
        ]



  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-contrib-concat'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-contrib-copy'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-contrib-coffee'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-contrib-clean'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-contrib-connect'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-contrib-compass'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-contrib-watch'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-contrib-livereload'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-jade'
  grunt.loadNpmTasks 'grunt-html2js'

  grunt.registerTask 'buildTemplates', ['clean:templates', 'copy:assets', 'jade', 'html2js:main', 'livereload']


  grunt.registerTask 'default', [ 'connect:livereload', 'watch']

Result

Single .js file containing list of all application templates wrapped in angular modules similar to this one:

angular.module("partials/directives/back-btn.html", []).run(["$templateCache", function($templateCache) {
  $templateCache.put("partials/directives/back-btn.html",
    "<a ng-href=\"{{href}}\" class=\"page-title-bar__back\"> <i class=\"icon-chevron-left\"> </i></a>");
}]);

Links

1. grunt.js
2. grunt html2js plugin