# Tutorial: 2 - Angular Templates

Now it's time to make the web page dynamic -- with Angular. We'll also add a test that verifies the code for the controller we are going to add.

There are many ways to structure the code for an application. For Angular apps, we encourage the use of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern to decouple the code and to separate concerns. With that in mind, let's use a little Angular and JavaScript to add model, view, and controller components to our app.

The app now contains a list with three phones.

The most important changes are listed below. You can see the full diff on GitHub:

### Template for the View

The view component is constructed by Angular from this template:

`app/index.html`:

    ...
    <body ng:controller="PhoneListCtrl">

      <ul>
        <li ng:repeat="phone in phones">
          {{phone.name}}
          <p>{{phone.snippet}}</p>
        </li>
      </ul>

      <script src="lib/angular/angular.js" ng:autobind></script>
      <script src="js/controllers.js"></script>
    </body>
    </html>

We replaced the hard-coded phone list with the `ng:repeat widget` and two Angular expressions enclosed in curly braces: `{{phone.name}}` and `{{phone.snippet}}`:

- The `ng:repeat="phone in phones"` statement in the `<li>` tag is an Angular repeater. The repeater tells Angular to create a `<li>` element for each phone in the list using the first `<li>` tag as the template.

- The curly braces around `phone.name` and `phone.snippet` are examples of Angular markup. The curly markup is shorthand for the Angular directive `ng:bind`. An `ng:bind` directive indicates a template binding point to Angular. Binding points are locations in a template where Angular creates data-binding between the view and the model.

In Angular, the view is a projection of the model through the HTML template. This means that whenever the model changes, Angular refreshes the appropriate binding points, which updates the view.

### Model and Controller

The data model (a simple array of phones in object literal notation) is instantiated within the controller function (`PhoneListCtrl`):

`app/js/controllers.js`:

    function PhoneListCtrl() {
      this.phones = [{"name": "Nexus S",
                      "snippet": "Fast just got faster with Nexus S."},
                     {"name": "Motorola XOOMâ¢ with Wi-Fi",
                      "snippet": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."},
                     {"name": "MOTOROLA XOOMâ¢",
                      "snippet": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."}];
    }

Although the controller is not yet doing very much controlling, it is playing a crucial role. By providing context for our data model, the controller allows us to establish data-binding between the model and the view. We connected the dots between the presentation, data, and logic components as follows:

- The name of our controller function (in the JavaScript file `controllers.js`) matches the `ng:controller` directive in the `<body>` tag (`PhoneListCtrl`).

- The data is instantiated within the scope of our controller function; our template binding points are located within the block bounded by the `<body ng:controller="PhoneListCtrl">` tag.

  The concept of a scope in Angular is crucial; a scope can be seen as the glue which allows the template, model and controller to work together. Angular uses scopes, along with the information contained in the template, data model, and controller, to keep models and views separate, but in sync. Any changes made to the model are reflected in the view; any changes that occur in the view are reflected in the model.

  To learn more about Angular scopes, see the `angular scope documentation`.

### Tests

The "Angular way" makes it easy to test code as it is being developed. Take a look at the following unit test for your newly created controller:

`test/unit/controllersSpec.js`:

    describe('PhoneCat controllers', function() {

      describe('PhoneListCtrl', function() {

        it('should create "phones" model with 3 phones', function() {
          var ctrl = new PhoneListCtrl();
          expect(ctrl.phones.length).toBe(3);
        });
      });
    });

The test verifies that we have three records in the phones array and the example demonstrates how easy it is to create a unit test for code in Angular. Since testing is such a critical part of software development, we make it easy to create tests in Angular so that developers are encouraged to write them.

Angular developers prefer the syntax of Jasmine's Behavior-driven Development (BDD) framework when writing tests. Although Angular does not require you to use Jasmine, we wrote all of the tests in this tutorial in Jasmine. You can learn about Jasmine on the Jasmine home page and on the Jasmine wiki.

The angular-seed project is pre-configured to run all unit tests using JsTestDriver. To run the test, do the following:

1. In a separate terminal window or tab, go to the `angular-phonecat` directory and run `./scripts/test-server.sh` to start the test web server.

2. Open a new browser tab or window and navigate to http://localhost:9876.

3. Choose "Capture this browser in strict mode".

   At this point, you can leave this tab open and forget about it. JsTestDriver will use it to execute the tests and report the results in the terminal.

4. Execute the test by running `./scripts/test.sh`

   You should see the following or similar output:

            Chrome: Runner reset.
            .
            Total 1 tests (Passed: 1; Fails: 0; Errors: 0) (2.00 ms)
              Chrome 11.0.696.57 Mac OS: Run 1 tests (Passed: 1; Fails: 0; Errors 0) (2.00 ms)

   Yay! The test passed! Or not...

   Note: If you see errors after you run the test, close the browser tab and go back to the terminal and kill the script, then repeat the procedure above.

## Experiments

- Add another binding to `index.html`. For example:

        <p>Total number of phones: {{phones.length}}</p>

- Create a new model property in the controller and bind to it from the template. For example:

        this.hello = "Hello, World!"

  Refresh your browser to make sure it says, "Hello, World!"

- Create a repeater that constructs a simple table:

        <table>
          <tr><th>row number</th></tr>
          <tr ng:repeat="i in [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]"><td>{{i}}</td></tr>
        </table>

  Now, make the list 1-based by incrementing `i` by one in the binding:

        <table>
          <tr><th>row number</th></tr>
          <tr ng:repeat="i in [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]"><td>{{i+1}}</td></tr>
        </table>

- Make the unit test fail by changing the `toBe(3)` statement to `toBe(4)`, and rerun the `./scripts/test.sh` script.

## Summary

You now have a dynamic app that features separate model, view, and controller components, and you are testing as you go. Now, let's go to step 3 to learn how to add full text search to the app.