Angular HttpPromise: difference between `success`/`error` methods and `then`'s arguments

Question

According to AngularJS doc, calls to $http return the following:

Returns a promise object with the standard then

Answer 1

.then() is chainable and will wait for previous .then() to resolve.

.success() and .error() can be chained, but they will all fire at once (so not much point to that)

.success() and .error() are just nice for simple calls (easy makers):

$http.post('/getUser').success(function(user){ 
   ... 
})

so you don't have to type this:

$http.post('getUser').then(function(response){
  var user = response.data;
})

But generally i handler all errors with .catch():

$http.get(...)
    .then(function(response){ 
      // successHandler
      // do some stuff
      return $http.get('/somethingelse') // get more data
    })
    .then(anotherSuccessHandler)
    .catch(errorHandler)

If you need to support <= IE8 then write your .catch() and .finally() like this (reserved methods in IE):

    .then(successHandler)
    ['catch'](errorHandler)

Working Examples:

Here's something I wrote in more codey format to refresh my memory on how it all plays out with handling errors etc:

http://jsfiddle.net/nalberg/v95tekz2/