Angular service call function in component

Question

So I know you can have two unrelated components communicate with each other via a service by having one component emit an event in the service and the other subscribe to it

Answer 1

Not by default. A service is an instance of a class, nothing more.

@Injectable()
class MyService {
}

@Component({
  selector: 'my-component',
  ...
)}
class MyComponent {
  constructor(private myService:MyService) {}
}

@NgModule({
  providers: [MyService],
  ...
})
export class AppModule {}

This way a service (MyService) instance gets passed to MyComponent but that is all. The service instance has no knowledge about MyComponent.

What you probably want is to add an Observable to your service and subscribe to it in your component.

@Component({
  selector: 'my-component',
  ...
)}
class MyComponent {
  constructor(myService:MyService) {
    myService.someObservable.subscribe(value => doSomething(value));
  }

  doSomething(value) {
    console.debug(value);
  }
}

this way the service "calls" a method on the component when the Observable someObservable emits another value.

For more details see detect change of nested property for component input