Arrays under scope.vm of directive undefined

[yosiasz]

Greetings,

When following Angular 1.x style guide for directives, if I am referencing the array scope.vm.virtStats from the controller, it comes back as undefined. but if I reference simple object from the controller such as scope.vm.title, it does return a value. Why is that? Because I do see scope.vm as having that virtStats
array in the console.

angular
        .module('app.dashboard')
        .controller('Dashboard', Dashboard)
        .directive('d3Chart', buildChart);
       `function buildChart() {
            var directive = {
                restrict: 'EA',
                link: linkFunc,
            };

            return directive;

            function linkFunc(scope, el, attr, ctrl) {
			...lots of d3 visualization code here
				console.log(scope.vm)
			}

			
function Dashboard($state, $scope, dataservice, logger) {
        var vm = this;
        vm.virtStats = [];
                        
        vm.title = 'Dashboard';
        
        clearSearchResult();
        
        activateVirtsData();

        function clearSearchResult() {
             vm.virtStats = [];
        };
      

        function activateVirtsData() {
            return dataservice.getVirtStatsData().then(function (data) {
                vm.virtStats = data;
                return vm.virtStats;
            });     
        } );            
        }; 

[bampakoa]

@yosiasz This happens because you are trying to access the array inside the link function of the directive which is called before the activateVirtsData

[yosiasz]

thanks @bampakoa!!! junk! been staring at this code too long.

[yosiasz]

@bampakoa question. but controller is being called before .directive?

.controller('Dashboard', Dashboard)
 .directive('d3Chart', buildChart);

[bampakoa]

@yosiasz They are not executed in the order that you declare it. Even if you do this:

 .directive('d3Chart', buildChart)
.controller('Dashboard', Dashboard)

the runtime order will be the same. Let me clarify if you did not get it.

[yosiasz]

Very informative! So I will need to figure out how to populate that array so that linkFunc has access to that array. thanks!

[yosiasz]

Is this tribal knowledge or is there documentation for this behavior?

[bampakoa]

I think you can find related information on the AngularJS official documentation.