angular_style_guide.md

Angular Style Guide

Kibana is written in Angular, and uses several utility methods to make using Angular easier.

Defining modules

Angular modules are defined using a custom require module named ui/modules. It is used as follows:

const app = require('ui/modules').get('app/namespace');

app above is a reference to an Angular module, and can be used to define controllers, providers and anything else used in Angular. While you can use this module to create/get any module with ui/modules, we generally use the "kibana" module for everything.

Promises

A more robust version of Angular's $q service is available as Promise. It can be used in the same way as $q, but it comes packaged with several utility methods that provide many of the same useful utilities as Bluebird.

app.service('CustomService', (Promise, someFunc) => {
  new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    ...
  });

  const promisedFunc = Promise.cast(someFunc);

  return Promise.resolve('value');
});

Routes

Angular routes are defined using a custom require module named routes that removes much of the required boilerplate.

import routes from 'ui/routes';

routes.when('/my/object/route/:id?', {
  // angular route code goes here
});

Private modules

A service called Private is available to load any function as an angular module without needing to define it as such. It is used as follows:

import PrivateExternalClass from 'path/to/some/class';
app.controller('myController', function($scope, otherDeps, Private) {
  const ExternalClass = Private(PrivateExternalClass);
  ...
});

Note: Use this sparingly. Whenever possible, your modules should not be coupled to the angular application itself.