I referred to this before asking this question: AngularJs doesn't bind ng-checked with ng-model
If ng-checked is evaluated to true on the html side, the ng-model is not updated. I can't ng-repeat as suggested in the above question because I have to use some styling for each checkbox.
Here is the plunker that I have created to illustrate my problem.
http://plnkr.co/edit/YsOsPh3vjkPMUUDa6r2t
To see what I want, please open the console, and just click on Submit button. Please don't check any checkboxes.
ngModel and ngChecked are not meant to be used together.
ngChecked is expecting an expression, so by saying ng-checked="true", you're basically saying that the checkbox will always be checked by default.
You should be able to just use ngModel, tied to a boolean property on your model. If you want something else, then you either need to use ngTrueValue and ngFalseValue (which only support strings right now), or write your own directive.
What is it exactly that you're trying to do? If you just want the first checkbox to be checked by default, you should change your model -- item1: true,.
Edit: You don't have to submit your form to debug the current state of the model, btw, you can just dump {{testModel}} into your HTML (or <pre>{{testModel|json}}</pre>). Also your ngModel attributes can be simplified to ng-model="testModel.item1".