# Developer Guide: Understanding Angular Expressions

Work in Progress This page is currently being revised. It might be incomplete or contain inaccuracies.

Expressions are bindings that you write in HTML and embed in templates in order to create views in angular. Angular expressions are similar but not equivalent to JavaScript expressions.

For example, these are all valid expressions in angular:

- `1+2={{1+2}}`
- `3*10|currency`
- `Hello {{name}}!`
- `Hello {{'World'}}!`

### Angular Expressions vs. JS Expressions

It might be tempting to think of angular view expressions as JavaScript expressions, but that is not entirely correct. Angular does not use a simple JavaScript eval of the expression text. You can think of angular expressions as JavaScript expressions with these differences:

- Attribute Evaluation: evaluation of all attributes are against the current scope, not to the global window as in JavaScript.
- Forgiving: expression evaluation is forgiving to undefined and null, unlike in JavaScript.
- No Control Flow Statements: you cannot do the following from an angular expression: conditionals, loops, or throw.
- Type Augmentation: the scope expression evaluator augments built-in types.
- Filters: you can add filters to an expression, for example to convert raw data into a human-readable format.
- The $: angular reserves this prefix to differentiate its API names from others.

If, on the other hand, you do want to run arbitrary JavaScript code, you should make it a controller method and call that. If you want to `eval()` an angular expression from JavaScript, use the `Scope:$eval()` method.

### Example

     1+2={{1+2}}

     it('should calculate expression in binding', function(){
       expect(binding('1+2')).toEqual('3');
     });

You can try evaluating different expressions here:

     <div ng:init="exprs=[]" class="expressions">
       Expression:
       <input type='text' name="expr" value="3*10|currency" size="80"/>
       <button ng:click="exprs.$add(expr)">Evaluate</button>
       <ul>
        <li ng:repeat="expr in exprs">
          [ <a href="" ng:click="exprs.$remove(expr)">X</a> ]
          <tt>{{expr}}</tt> => <span ng:bind="$parent.$eval(expr)"></span>
         </li>
       </ul>
     </div>

     it('should allow user expression testing', function(){
        element('.expressions :button').click();
        var li = using('.expressions ul').repeater('li');
        expect(li.count()).toBe(1);
        expect(li.row(0)).toEqual(["3*10|currency", "$30.00"]);
     });

## Attribute Evaluation

Evaluation of all attributes takes place against the current scope. Unlike JavaScript, where names default to global window properties, angular expressions have to use `$window` to refer to the global object. For example, if you want to call `alert()`, which is defined on `window`, an expression must use `$window.alert()`. This is done intentionally to prevent accidental access to the global state (a common source of subtle bugs).

     <div class="example2" ng:init="$window = $service('$window')">
       Name: <input name="name" type="text" value="World"/>
       <button ng:click="($window.mockWindow || $window).alert('Hello ' + name)">Greet</button>
     </div>

     it('should calculate expression in binding', function(){
       var alertText;
       this.addFutureAction('set mock', function($window, $document, done) {
         $window.mockWindow = {
           alert: function(text){ alertText = text; }
         };
         done();
       });
       element(':button:contains(Greet)').click();
       expect(this.addFuture('alert text', function(done) {
         done(null, alertText);
       })).toBe('Hello World');
     });

### Forgiving

Expression evaluation is forgiving to undefined and null. In JavaScript, evaluating `a.b.c` throws an exception if `a` is not an object. While this makes sense for a general purpose language, the expression evaluations are primarily used for data binding, which often look like this:

        {{a.b.c}}

It makes more sense to show nothing than to throw an exception if `a` is undefined (perhaps we are waiting for the server response, and it will become defined soon). If expression evaluation wasn't forgiving we'd have to write bindings that clutter the code, for example: `{{((a||{}).b||{}).c}}`

Similarly, invoking a function `a.b.c()` on undefined or null simply returns undefined.

Assignments work the same way in reverse:

       a.b.c = 10

...creates the intermediary objects even if a is undefined.

### No Control Flow Statements

You cannot write a control flow statement in an expression. The reason behind this is core to the angular philosophy that application logic should be in controllers, not in the view. If you need a conditional (including ternary operators), loop, or to throw from a view expression, delegate to a JavaScript method instead.

### Type Augmentation

Built-in types have methods like `[].push()`, but the richness of these methods is limited. Consider the example below, which allows you to do a simple search over a canned set of contacts. The example would be much more complicated if we did not have the `Array:$filter()`. There is no built-in method on `Array` called `$filter` and angular doesn't add it to `Array.prototype` because that could collide with other JavaScript frameworks.

For this reason the scope expression evaluator augments the built-in types to make them act like they have extra methods. The actual method for `$filter()` is `angular.Array.filter()`. You can call it from JavaScript.

Extensions: You can further extend the expression vocabulary by adding new methods to `angular.Array` or `angular.String`, etc.

     <div ng:init="friends = [
       {name:'John', phone:'555-1212'},
       {name:'Mary', phone:'555-9876'},
       {name:'Mike', phone:'555-4321'},
       {name:'Adam', phone:'555-5678'},
       {name:'Julie', phone:'555-8765'}]"></div>
     Search: <input name="searchText"/>
     <table class="example3">
       <tr><th>Name</th><th>Phone</th><tr>
       <tr ng:repeat="friend in friends.$filter(searchText)">
         <td>{{friend.name}}</td>
         <td>{{friend.phone}}</td>
       </tr>
     </table>

     it('should filter the list', function(){
        var tr = using('table.example3').repeater('tr.ng-attr-widget');
        expect(tr.count()).toBe(5);
        input('searchText').enter('a');
        expect(tr.count()).toBe(2);

     });

### Filters

When presenting data to the user, you might need to convert the data from its raw format to a user-friendly format. For example, you might have a data object that needs to be formatted according to the locale before displaying it to the user. You can pass expressions through a chain of filters like this:

       name | uppercase

The expression evaluator simply passes the value of name to angular.filter.uppercase.

Chain filters using this syntax:

       value | filter1 | filter2

You can also pass colon-delimited arguments to filters, for example, to display the number 123 with 2 decimal points:

       123 | number:2

## The $

You might be wondering, what is the significance of the $ prefix? It is simply a prefix that angular uses, to differentiate its API names from others. If angular didn't use $, then evaluating `a.length()` would return undefined because neither a nor angular define such a property.

Consider that in a future version of angular we might choose to add a length method, in which case the behavior of the expression would change. Worse yet, you the developer could create a length property and then we would have a collision. This problem exists because angular augments existing objects with additional behavior. By prefixing its additions with $ we are reserving our namespace so that angular developers and developers who use angular can develop in harmony without collisions.

### Related Topics

- Understanding Angular Markup
- Understanding Angular Filters

### Related API

- `Angular Compiler API`