Reputation: 1136
I'm working to cleanly structure my AngularJS app according to best practices, which includes separating the controllers and app into different script files.
Quick question: where should I put my factories and services? I am asking in the context of having factories & services that will be accessed outside of the scope of a single controller as well as having some that are within the scope of a single controller.
Upvotes: 11
Views: 4540
Reputation: 1136
Update: the immediate answer below is no longer correct. Please see the latest addendum (written March 1, 2015) to this answer.
Got it! According to Brian Ford's article on Building Huuuuuuuge Angular Apps, the best practice appears to be to connect services and factories to the app in a separate file, like so:
root-app-folder
├── index.html
├── scripts
│ ├── controllers
│ │ └── main.js
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── directives
│ │ └── myDirective.js
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── filters
│ │ └── myFilter.js
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── services
│ │ └── myService.js
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── vendor
│ │ ├── angular.js
│ │ ├── angular.min.js
│ │ ├── es5-shim.min.js
│ │ └── json3.min.js
│ └── app.js
├── styles
│ └── ...
└── views
├── main.html
└── ...
(PSST! In case you're wondering, Brian Ford is part of the AngularJS team, so his answer seems pretty legit.)
Addition (April 24, 2013)
This just in: Yeoman is a fantastic tool for generating apps with the proper directory structure for big, functional Angular apps. It even has Grunt & Bower packed in!
Addendum (March 1, 2015)
According to a comment via PaoloCargnin, Google actually recommends a different structure, as detailed by this document. The structure should look like this:
sampleapp/
app.css
app.js //top-level configuration, route def’ns for the app
app-controller.js
app-controller_test.js
components/
adminlogin/
adminlogin.css //styles only used by this component
adminlogin.js //optional file for module definition
adminlogin-directive.js
adminlogin-directive_test.js
private-export-filter/
private-export-filter.js
private-export-filter_test.js
userlogin/
somefilter.js
somefilter_test.js
userlogin.js
userlogin.css
userlogin.html
userlogin-directive.js
userlogin-directive_test.js
userlogin-service.js
userlogin-service_test.js
index.html
subsection1/
subsection1.js
subsection1-controller.js
subsection1-controller_test.js
subsection1_test.js
subsection1-1/
subsection1-1.css
subsection1-1.html
subsection1-1.js
subsection1-1-controller.js
subsection1-1-controller_test.js
subsection1-2/
subsection2/
subsection2.css
subsection2.html
subsection2.js
subsection2-controller.js
subsection2-controller_test.js
subsection3/
subsection3-1/
etc...
Upvotes: 8