AngularJS drop down (ng- options) not binding - string to object (initial selection)

Question

I am having a problem binding data retrieved from the server to a drop down list. The main issue I think is the fact that the comparison is done on differing object types.

Answer 1

It is not exactly clear what the problem is, but you can save yourself some work by binding the <select> to the currently selected currency object (so you don't have to look it up later).
select + ngOptions allow you to bind to one value while displaying another, with the following syntax:

<select ng-model="selectedCurrency"
        ng-options="currency as currency.shortDescription
                    for currency in viewModel.currencies">
</select>

In the above example, $scope.selectedCurrency will be bound to the whole currency object, but currency.shortDescription will be displayed in the dropdown.

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See, also, this short demo.

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UPDATE:

In case you don't need to bind to the whole currency object, but just bind updatedObject's baseCurrencyCode property to the abbreviation of the selected (in dropdown) currency, you can do it like this:

<!-- In the VIEW -->
<select ng-model="updatedObject.baseCurrencyCode"
        ng-options="c.abbreviation as c.shortDescription
                    for c in currencies">
</select>

// In the CONTROLLER
$scope.currencies = [...];
$scope.updatedObject = {
    ...
    baseCurrencyCode: <baseCurrencyCodeFromServer>
};

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See, also, that short demo.

Answer 2

I have had the same problem, ng-model and ng-option being from 2 different sources. My ng-model is bound to a value in a json object representing a chosen filename and my ng-option is a list of possible values taken from a csv file.

In the controller I am reading a directory via a Nodejs route, and creating a json array of filenames like this

var allCsvFiles = [{"name":"file1.csv"},{"name","file2.csv},etc..]

The current csv file, i.e. the selected one is stored in another json array

[{"date":"01-06-2017","csvfile":"file1.csv","colour":"red"},{...}, etc].

I was using the following code for the dropdown:

<select type="text" ng-model="file.csvfile" 
ng-options="opt.name for opt in allCsvFiles track by opt.name"></select>

Which caused the current selection to be blank and if I selected an item from the dropdown it put [object],[object] as the current selection. If I stepped through the code I found that it seemed to be selecting {"name","file1.csv"} as the option and couldn't display it, this seemed odd as my ng-options selection looks like it should just return the value of "name" not the array entry. I tried many different ways to make this work but eventually I found that if I made the list of possible selections a plain javascript array:

var allCsvFiles = ["file1.csv","file2.csv", "file3,csv] 

and changed the select to:

<select type="text" ng-model="file.csvfile" ng-options="opt for opt in allCsvFiles"></select>

then the dropdown selection worked as expected.

I may have missed some other obvious solution here, but as the array of json objects is one dimensional anyway it doesn't seem to be an issue.

It looks like the OPs question has been answered, I just thought I'd add this as it solved it for me.