ui-select2 (deprecated)

Annoucement

This directive is now obsolete. A new initiative, more active, and 100% angular is available at https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-select.

As development slowed down on ui-select2, it is getting unlikely that bugs will be fixed. So the new alternative should be used as soon as possible.

Description

This directive allows you to enhance your select elements with behaviour from the select2 library.

Requirements

• AngularJS
• JQuery
• Select2

Setup

1. Install Karma, Grunt and Bower $ npm install -g karma grunt-cli bower
2. Install development dependencies $ npm install
3. Install components $ bower install
4. ???
5. Profit!

Testing

We use Grunt to check for JavaScript syntax errors and execute all unit tests. To run Grunt, simply execute:

$ grunt

This will lint and test the code, then exit. To have Grunt stay open and automatically lint and test your files whenever you make a code change, use:

$ grunt karma:server watch

This will start a Karma server in the background and run unit tests in Firefox and PhantomJS whenever the source code or spec file is saved.

Usage

We use bower for dependency management. Install AngularUI Select2 into your project by running the command

$ bower install angular-ui-select2

If you use a bower.json file in your project, you can have Bower save ui-select2 as a dependency by passing the --save or --save-dev flag with the above command.

This will copy the ui-select2 files into your bower_components folder, along with its dependencies. Load the script files in your application:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="bower_components/select2/select2.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="bower_components/jquery/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="bower_components/select2/select2.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="bower_components/angular/angular.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="bower_components/angular-ui-select2/src/select2.js"></script>

(Note that jquery must be loaded before angular so that it doesn't use jqLite internally)

Add the select2 module as a dependency to your application module:

var myAppModule = angular.module('MyApp', ['ui.select2']);

Apply the directive to your form elements:

<select ui-select2 ng-model="select2" data-placeholder="Pick a number">
    <option value=""></option>
    <option value="one">First</option>
    <option value="two">Second</option>
    <option value="three">Third</option>
</select>

Options

All the select2 options can be passed through the directive. You can read more about the supported list of options and what they do on the Select2 Documentation Page

myAppModule.controller('MyController', function($scope) {
    $scope.select2Options = {
        allowClear:true
    };
});

<select ui-select2="select2Options" ng-model="select2">
    <option value="one">First</option>
    <option value="two">Second</option>
    <option value="three">Third</option>
</select>

Some times it may make sense to specify the options in the template file.

<select ui-select2="{ allowClear: true}" ng-model="select2">
    <option value="one">First</option>
    <option value="two">Second</option>
    <option value="three">Third</option>
</select>

To define global defaults, you can configure the uiSelect2Config injectable:

myAppModule.run(['uiSelect2Config', function(uiSelect2Config) {
	uiSelect2Config.placeholder = "Placeholder text";
}]);

Working with ng-model

The ui-select2 directive plays nicely with ng-model and validation directives such as ng-required.

If you add the ng-model directive to same the element as ui-select2 then the picked option is automatically synchronized with the model value.

Working with dynamic options

ui-select2 is incompatible with <select ng-options>. For the best results use <option ng-repeat> instead.

<select ui-select2 ng-model="select2" data-placeholder="Pick a number">
    <option value=""></option>
    <option ng-repeat="number in range" value="{{number.value}}">{{number.text}}</option>
</select>

Working with placeholder text

In order to properly support the Select2 placeholder, create an empty <option> tag at the top of the <select> and either set a data-placeholder on the select element or pass a placeholder option to Select2.

<select ui-select2 ng-model="number" data-placeholder="Pick a number">
    <option value=""></option>
    <option value="one">First</option>
    <option value="two">Second</option>
    <option value="three">Third</option>
</select>

ng-required directive

If you apply the required directive to element then the form element is invalid until an option is selected.

Note: Remember that the ng-required directive must be explicitly set, i.e. to "true". This is especially true on divs:

<select ui-select2 ng-model="number" data-placeholder="Pick a number" ng-required="true">
    <option value=""></option>
    <option value="one">First</option>
    <option value="two">Second</option>
    <option value="three">Third</option>
</select>

Using simple tagging mode

When AngularJS View-Model tags are stored as a list of strings, setting the ui-select2 specific option simple_tags will allow to keep the model as a list of strings, and not convert it into a list of Select2 tag objects.

<input
    type="hidden"
    ui-select2="select2Options"
    ng-model="list_of_string"
    >

myAppModule.controller('MyController', function($scope) {
    $scope.list_of_string = ['tag1', 'tag2']
    $scope.select2Options = {
        'multiple': true,
        'simple_tags': true,
        'tags': ['tag1', 'tag2', 'tag3', 'tag4']  // Can be empty list.
    };
});