When to use double braces {{}} in angularJS

Question

Taken from the Angular documentation:

Angular Expressions
Angular expressions are JavaScript-like code snippets that are mainly placed in inte

Answer 1

It depends on the directive attribute in question and the type of binding it uses. Further more it depends on what you intend in the given situation.

From your example:

ng-repeat="appModule in applicationModules"

No need for the braces as this expression is evaluated by angular inside the ng-repeat directive.

---

id="{{appModule.Name}}"

Here we need braces as we want the id to be equal to the value of the expression.

---

ng-class="{ 'selected' :  selectedAppModule == '{{appModule.Name}}' }"

I'm pretty sure this can be written as:

ng-class="{ 'selected' :  selectedAppModule == appModule.Name }"

And you get the same behaviour.

---

ng-click="menuClicked(appModule.Name)"

In this example we need the ng-click to be bound to the method named menuClicked.

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Generally we use {{}} when we want to evaluate the expression and when dealing with attributes we don't always need to use {{}} as they are in many cases evaluated behind the scenes.

Simple Tip A rule of thumb for when {{}} is needed is by thinking of it as a wrapper for a .ToString()-method. Does converting the expression to a string make sense, then so does using {{}}. (Any counter examples are very welcome)