Combining resources in AngularJS

Question

I have a RESTful API that provides me with employees and departments. In my AngularJS app, I need to know the employee and the departments the employee belongs to. I have defined two factory services for that:

angular.module('myApp.services', [])
    .factory('Employee', function ($resource) {
        return $resource ('/api/employees/:id', { id: '@id' });
    })
    .factory('Department', function ($resource) {
        return $resource ('/api/departments/:id', { id: '@id' });
    })
;

In the controller, I call:

$scope.employee = Employee.get({id: 'me'});

Next, I want to call:

$scope.departments = [];
angular.forEach($scope.employee.departmentIds, function (departmentId) {
    $scope.departments.push(Department.get({ id: departmentId }));
});

But $scope.employee is a promise object, so $scope.employee.departmentIds will only be known when the first request is completed.

I could solve it like this:

Employee.get({id: 'me'}).$promise.then(function (employee) {
    $scope.employee = employee;
    $scope.departments = [];
    angular.forEach(employee.departmentIds, function (departmentId) {
        $scope.departments.push(Department.get({ id: departmentId }));
    });
});

The problem is that I need this information in multiple controllers, and don't want to repeat this code in every controller. So my question is: is there a way to combine these two resources as a service which provides both the employee data and the data of the departments to which that employee belongs?

Answer 1

You can do something like that:

angular.module('myApp.services', [])
    .factory('SimpleEmployee', function ($resource) {
        return $resource ('/api/employees/:id', { id: '@id' });
    })
    .factory('Department', function ($resource) {
        return $resource ('/api/departments/:id', { id: '@id' });
    })
    .factory('Employee', ['SimpleEmployee', 'Department', function(SimpleEmployee, Department) {
        return {
            get: function(params) {
                var data = SimpleEmployee.get({id: params.id}, function (employee) {
                    var obj = {
                        employee: employee,
                        departments: []
                    };                        
                    angular.forEach(employee.departmentIds, function (departmentId) {
                        obj.departments.push(Department.get({ id: departmentId }));
                    });
                    return obj;
                });
                return data;
            }
        }
    }]);

And you dont need to change anything in your controller.

Answer 2

This answer is based on the answer of @Beterraba (but the code example in that answer is incorrect):

Service:

angular.module('myApp.services', [])
    .factory('SimpleEmployee', function ($resource) {
        return $resource ('/api/employees/:id', { id: '@id' });
    })
    .factory('Department', function ($resource) {
        return $resource ('/api/departments/:id', { id: '@id' });
    })
    .factory('Employee', ['SimpleEmployee', 'Department', function(SimpleEmployee, Department) {
        return {
            get: function(params) {
                return SimpleEmployee.get({id: params.id}).$promise.then(function (employee) {
                    employee.departments = [];
                    angular.forEach(employee.departmentIds, function (departmentId) {
                        employee.departments.push(Department.get({ id: departmentId }));
                    });
                    delete employee.departmentIds;
                    return employee;
                });
            }
        }
    }]);

Controller:

Employee.get({ id: 'me' }).then(function (employee) {
    $scope.employee = employee;
});

From AngularJS 1.2 RC3 on you need to unwrap any promise objects on the controller. I found this information here.

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