AngularJS - Access isolated scope in directive's link function

Question

I\'m giving a first try at AngularJS custom directives.

I\'m having trouble using (or understanding ...) the isolated scope in the link function of the directive.

Answer 1

well, none of the answers above actually mentioned one key aspect, even with '=', it doesn't seem to me you can access the scope inside link function directly like the following,

scope: {
    data: '=',
},
link: function(scope, elem, attrs) {
    console.debug(scope.data); // undefined

but you can access the scope in the internal function,

link: function(scope, elem, attrs) {
    scope.saveComment = function() {
        console.debug(scope.data);

so it seems to me there might be a time lag in when scope.data can be available.