Immediately call controller function after its creation in Angular

Question

I am new to AngularJS and I created a modal as described on http://angular-ui.github.io/bootstrap/ which opens on the click of a button. However, I also want it to open directly when the page loads, as some critical settings need to be entered in the modal. To this end, I directly call the open function when the controller is initialized and I was wondering whether this is a good or a bad practice, as I can't seem to find a better solution.

This is my Javascript code:

angular.module('myApp', ['ui.bootstrap'])

.controller('NavBarCtrl', ['$scope', '$modal', function($scope, $modal) {
    $scope.openSettings = function() {
        var settingsInstance = $modal.open({
            templateUrl: 'settingsTemplate',
            controller: 'SettingsInstanceCtrl',
            scope: $scope
        });
    }

    $scope.reset = function() {
        alert('Not implemented yet');
    };

    $scope.openSettings();
}])

.controller('SettingsInstanceCtrl', ['$scope', '$modalInstance', function($scope, $modalInstance) {
    $scope.closeSettings = function() {
        $modalInstance.dismiss('closed');
    }

    $scope.saveSettings = function() {
        //save
        $modalInstance.dismiss('saved');
    }
}]);

As you can see in the code, the closeSettings function of the controller's scope is immediately called when the $scope is set. Any feedback would be welcome.

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

This really depends, wether you want to reuse this controller in another view / app without this behaviour:

YES: You could then use a nested element such as

<span ng-init="openSettings()">

that would call the controller action, or use ng-init it directly on the same element.

NO: Well, this is perfectly fine i do it all the time if this shall be the standard way your controller works.

Regarding best practices i would recommend splitting your controllers into separate files SettingsInstanceCtrl.js, NavBarCtrl.js if your app grows larger.