Here is a solution which works where you want to pass a value into your controller but you aren't explicitly declaring the controller in your html (which ng-init seems to require) - if, for example, you are rendering your templates with ng-view and declaring each controller for the corresponding route via routeProvider.

JS

app.directive('currentuser', function() {
  return function(scope, element, attrs) {
    scope.username = attrs.name;
  };
});

html

<div ng-app="app">
  <div class="view-container">
    <div ng-view currentuser name="testusername" class="view-frame animate-view"></div>
  </div>
</div>

(This feels like a very easy way to get a current user into your Angular App with all the authentication kept outside Angular. You could have a before_filter to prevent non-logged in users getting to the html where your Angular app is bootstrapped in, and within that html you could just interpolate the logged in user's name and even their ID if you wanted to interact with the user's details via http requests from your Angular app. You could allow non-logged in users to use the Angular App with a default 'guest user'. Any advice on why this approach would be bad would be welcome - it feels too easy to be sensible!)

Here is a solution (based on Marcin Wyszynski's suggestion) which works where you want to pass a value into your controller but you aren't explicitly declaring the controller in your html (which ng-init seems to require) - if, for example, you are rendering your templates with ng-view and declaring each controller for the corresponding route via routeProvider.

JS

messageboard.directive('currentuser', ['CurrentUser', function(CurrentUser) {
  return function(scope, element, attrs) {
    CurrentUser.name = attrs.name;
  };
}]);

html

<div ng-app="app">
  <div class="view-container">
    <div ng-view currentuser name="testusername" class="view-frame animate-view"></div>
  </div>
</div>

In this solution, CurrentUser is a service which can be injected into any controller, with the .name property then available.

Two notes:

• a problem I've encountered is that .name gets set after the controller loads, so as a workaround I have a short timeout before rendering username on the controller's scope. Is there a neat way of waiting until .name has been set on the service?

• this feels like a very easy way to get a current user into your Angular App with all the authentication kept outside Angular. You could have a before_filter to prevent non-logged in users getting to the html where your Angular app is bootstrapped in, and within that html you could just interpolate the logged in user's name and even their ID if you wanted to interact with the user's details via http requests from your Angular app. You could allow non-logged in users to use the Angular App with a default 'guest user'. Any advice on why this approach would be bad would be welcome - it feels too easy to be sensible!)