How can I set a dynamic model name in AngularJS?

Question

How can I set a dynamic model name in AngularJS?

I want to populate a form with some dynamic questions (fiddle here):

<div ng-app ng-controller="QuestionController">
    <ul ng-repeat="question in Questions">
        <li>
            <div>{{question.Text}}</div>
            <select ng-model="Answers['{{question.Name}}']" ng-options="option for option in question.Options">
            </select>
        </li>
    </ul>

    <a ng-click="ShowAnswers()">Submit</a>
</div>

function QuestionController($scope) {
    $scope.Answers = {};

    $scope.Questions = [
    {
        "Text": "Gender?",
        "Name": "GenderQuestion",
        "Options": ["Male", "Female"]},
    {
        "Text": "Favorite color?",
        "Name": "ColorQuestion",
        "Options": ["Red", "Blue", "Green"]}
    ];

    $scope.ShowAnswers = function()
    {
        alert($scope.Answers["GenderQuestion"]);
        alert($scope.Answers["{{question.Name}}"]);
    };
}

Everything works, except the model is literally Answers["{{question.Name}}"], instead of the evaluated Answers["GenderQuestion"]. How can I set that model name dynamically?

angularjs

Answer 1

http://jsfiddle.net/DrQ77/

You can simply put javascript expression in ng-model.

Answer 2

What I ended up doing is something like this:

In the controller:

link: function($scope, $element, $attr) {
  $scope.scope = $scope;  // or $scope.$parent, as needed
  $scope.field = $attr.field = '_suffix';
  $scope.subfield = $attr.sub_node;
  ...

so in the templates I could use totally dynamic names, and not just under a certain hard-coded element (like in your "Answers" case):

<textarea ng-model="scope[field][subfield]"></textarea>

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

To make the answer provided by @abourget more complete, the value of scopeValue[field] in the following line of code could be undefined. This would result in an error when setting subfield:

<textarea ng-model="scopeValue[field][subfield]"></textarea>

One way of solving this problem is by adding an attribute ng-focus="nullSafe(field)", so your code would look like the below:

<textarea ng-focus="nullSafe(field)" ng-model="scopeValue[field][subfield]"></textarea>

Then you define nullSafe( field ) in a controller like the below:

$scope.nullSafe = function ( field ) {
  if ( !$scope.scopeValue[field] ) {
    $scope.scopeValue[field] = {};
  }
};

This would guarantee that scopeValue[field] is not undefined before setting any value to scopeValue[field][subfield].

Note: You can't use ng-change="nullSafe(field)" to achieve the same result because ng-change happens after the ng-model has been changed, which would throw an error if scopeValue[field] is undefined.