For watching an object scope variable, is $scope.$watch
with objectEquality
set to true OR $scope.$watchCollection
better?
For a $scope
object variable (like 15 attributes, some nested 2 levels deep) updated with input elements and ng-model
in the view, how bad is $scope.$watch
with objectEquality
set to true
? Is this a big thing to avoid?
Is $watchCollection
a better solution?
I am looking for easy wins to improve performance on my AngularJS App (I'm still stuck on v1.2.2).
// ctrl scope var
$scope.filters = {
name: '',
info: {test: '', foo: '', bar: ''},
yep: ''
// etc ...
}
// ctrl watch ?
$scope.$watch('filters', function(newVal, oldVal) {
if(newVal !== oldVal) {
// call with updated filters
}
}, true);
// or ctrl watch collection ?
$scope.$watchCollection('filters', function(newVal, oldVal) {
if(newVal !== oldVal) {
// call with updated filters
}
});
// view input with ng-model
<input type="text" ng-model="filters.name" />
<input type="text" ng-model="filters.info.test" />
<input type="text" ng-model="filters.yep" />
// etc ...
The
$watchCollection()
function is a sort-of mid-ground between the two$watch()
configurations above. It's more in-depth than the vanilla $watch() function; but, it's not nearly as expensive as the deep-equality$watch()
function. Like the$watch()
function, the$watchCollection()
works by comparing physical object references; however, unlike the$watch()
function, the$watchCollection()
goes one-level deep and performs an additional, shallow reference check of the top level items in the collection.