ng-model on <form>, binding of contained controls as members by 'name' attribute

[eddelplus]

I think it would be really cool to make

<form name="formNewEntry" ng-model="newentry"> <input type="text" name="alias" required> <input type="email" name="email"> <input type="text" name="subject" required> <textarea rows="5" name = "body"></textarea> </form>

an equivalent shortcut for

<form name="formNewEntry" class="offset1 span9"> <input type="text" ng-model="newentry.alias" required> <input type="email" ng-model="newentry.email"> <input type="text" ng-model="newentry.subject" required> <textarea rows="5" ng-model="newentry.body"></textarea> </form>

This would help to angularize existing forms quickly and reduce the amoung of ng-specific syntax in the HTML. The object in the scope that the form as whole binds to corresponds to data that may have been sent via POST to a server before.

So to word it a bit more precisely: ng-bind on a form would establish a default binding for all controls withing that form. Each control that does not have a ng-bind of its own, will be bound to a member of the object that the form as a whole is bound to.

Does that make sense?

I'm currently working on CornerCouch, a CouchDB module for AngularJS. Progress has been excellent so far. $http is far superior to $.ajax in jQuery when it comes to JSON centric applications. This issue has struck me during the design of simple sample apps.

[pkozlowski-opensource]

@eddelplus from what I know about the code and usage patterns for the current forms your proposal would trigger major overhaul with the backward-compatibility breaking. Currently the "name" attribute is already used to expose validation messages.

[eddelplus]

@pkozlowski-opensource: I've thought about the FormController which controls validity before posting. The form controller is derived from the name attribute of the form, the proposed ng-bind on the form would need to specify a scope variable other than the FormController, with attr.name != attr.nbBind being the requirement. The FormController and the form's data object would be two separate things in the scope. I figured that at the same time in compile/link when the FormController members are added there would be an opportunity to create corresponding data bindings as well.

[eddelplus]

To get an idea of how daunting a task this would be I took a copy of 1.1.1 and starting hacking into it. The companion to the ngModel directive is the ngModelController that wires up scope/model and the control. This obviously happens for every individual control.

Without ng-model directive on the indivual input fields the inputDirective and selectDirective would need controllers to do that. They might just be a reference to a slightly modified ngModelController. But still: Given the hard-core nature of the change, I'd be just as reluctant. I guess we'll just have to live with ng-model on every control