Order of execution of directive functions in AngularJS

Question

What is the order of execution of directive functions? The documentation doesn't seem to address this.

Ex

1. template / templateUrl (is evaluated)
2. controllerFn
3. compileFn
4. linkFn

Answer

From answer below: http://plnkr.co/edit/79iyKSbfxgkzk2Pivuak (plunker shows nested and sibling directives)

1. Template is parsed
2. compile() (changes made to the template within compile are proliferated down to linking functions)
3. controller()
4. preLink()
5. postLink()

Answer 1

on related note, here my understanding of exec order across the DOM.

Here is a demo (open browser JS console)

Given this DOM using directive foo:

  <div id="1" foo>
    one
    <div id="1_1" foo>one.one</div>
  </div>

  <div id="2" foo>two</div>

...AngularJS will traverse the DOM - twice - in depth-first order:

1st pass foo.compile()

1) compile: 1

2) compile: 1_1

3) compile: 2

2nd pass: foo.controller() traversing down; foo.link() while backtracking

controller: 1

controller: 1_1

link: 1_1

link: 1

controller: 2

link: 2

Answer 2

Pre-linking function: Executed before the child elements are linked. Not safe to do DOM transformation since the compiler linking function will fail to locate the correct elements for linking.

Post-linking function: Executed after the child elements are linked. It is safe to do DOM transformation in the post-linking function.

Above excerpt is taken from the official docs on directives.

So, to answer your question, Post-linking/Link function is when/where you can safely operate on element.children().