Global variables in AngularJS

Question

I have a problem where i\'m initialising a variable on the scope in a controller. Then it gets changed in another controller when a user logs in. This variable is used to co

Answer 1

If you just want to store a value, according to the Angular documentation on Providers, you should use the Value recipe:

var myApp = angular.module('myApp', []);
myApp.value('clientId', 'a12345654321x');

Then use it in a controller like this:

myApp.controller('DemoController', ['clientId', function DemoController(clientId) {
    this.clientId = clientId;
}]);

The same thing can be achieved using a Provider, Factory, or Service since they are "just syntactic sugar on top of a provider recipe" but using Value will achieve what you want with minimal syntax.

The other option is to use $rootScope, but it's not really an option because you shouldn't use it for the same reasons you shouldn't use global variables in other languages. It's advised to be used sparingly.

Since all scopes inherit from $rootScope, if you have a variable $rootScope.data and someone forgets that data is already defined and creates $scope.data in a local scope you will run into problems.

---

If you want to modify this value and have it persist across all your controllers, use an object and modify the properties keeping in mind Javascript is pass by "copy of a reference":

myApp.value('clientId', { value: 'a12345654321x' });
myApp.controller('DemoController', ['clientId', function DemoController(clientId) {
    this.clientId = clientId;
    this.change = function(value) {
        clientId.value = 'something else';
    }
}];

JSFiddle example