Delaying AngularJS route change until model loaded to prevent flicker

Question

I am wondering if there is a way (similar to Gmail) for AngularJS to delay showing a new route until after each model and its data has been fetched using it

Answer 1

Here's a minimal working example which works for Angular 1.0.2

Template:

JavaScript:

function MyCtrl($scope, datasets) {    
    $scope.datasets = datasets;
}

MyCtrl.resolve = {
    datasets : function($q, $http) {
        var deferred = $q.defer();

        $http({method: 'GET', url: '/someUrl'})
            .success(function(data) {
                deferred.resolve(data)
            })
            .error(function(data){
                //actually you'd want deffered.reject(data) here
                //but to show what would happen on success..
                deferred.resolve("error value");
            });

        return deferred.promise;
    }
};

var myApp = angular.module('myApp', [], function($routeProvider) {
    $routeProvider.when('/', {
        templateUrl: '/editor-tpl.html',
        controller: MyCtrl,
        resolve: MyCtrl.resolve
    });
});​
​

http://jsfiddle.net/dTJ9N/3/

Streamlined version:

Since $http() already returns a promise (aka deferred), we actually don't need to create our own. So we can simplify MyCtrl. resolve to:

MyCtrl.resolve = {
    datasets : function($http) {
        return $http({
            method: 'GET', 
            url: 'http://fiddle.jshell.net/'
        });
    }
};

The result of $http() contains data, status, headers and config objects, so we need to change the body of MyCtrl to:

$scope.datasets = datasets.data;

http://jsfiddle.net/dTJ9N/5/