Can I require generic parent directive in AngularJS

Question

Can a child directive require a parent without knowing exactly which directive that parent is, just that it "implements an interface"?

For example:

<parentImplX>
  <child></child>
</parentImplX>

In the above example I want the controller injected into child to be ParentImplXCtrl. But If I do:

<parentImplY>
  <child></child>
</parentImplY>

I want the controller to be ParentImplYCtrl.

directives.directive("parentImplX", function () {
  return {
    scope: {},
    restrict: "E", 
    controller: ParentImplXCtrl
  }
});

directives.directive("parentImplY", function () {
  return {
    scope: {},
    restrict: "E", 
    controller: ParentImplYCtrl
  }
});

directives.directive("child", function () {
  return {
    scope: {},
    restrict: "E",
    require: "?^^parentInterface",
    link: function ($scope, $element, attributes, parent /* type ParentInterface */) {
      parent.method();
    }
  }
});

Answer 1

I've found that angular 'require' does not support this. However, AngularJS stores the controllers as well as the $scopes of $elements in the $element.data() construct. So it was very simple to write your own 'interface require'. You need to traverse $element.parent().data() and make sure there is an identifier to look for. In my case isFocusNode. Note: `FocusNode can have many implementations. It is the whole point.

  function findFocusNodeParent(_element) {
    var data = _element.data();
    for (var key in data) {
      var angularObject = data[key];
      if (angularObject.isFocusNode && angularObject.isFocusNode()) {
        return angularObject;
      }
    }
    var _parentElement = _element.parent();
    if (_parentElement.length > 0) {
      return findFocusNodeParent(_parentElement);
    } else {
      // No parent FocusNode found. Must be root
      return null;
    }
  }
  var parentFocusNodeController = findFocusNodeParent($element);