Perhaps you just need to do it in an “angular way”… that is, to use a directive to set up your DOM elements and do event bindings, use a service to get your data, and use a controller to do your business logic… all while leveraging the dependency injection goodness that is Angular…
A service to get your autocomplete data…
app.factory('autoCompleteDataService', [function() {
return {
getSource: function() {
//this is where you'd set up your source... could be an external source, I suppose. 'something.php'
return ['apples', 'oranges', 'bananas'];
}
}
}]);
a directive to do the work of setting up the autocomplete plugin.
app.directive('autoComplete', function(autoCompleteDataService) {
return {
restrict: 'A',
link: function(scope, elem, attr, ctrl) {
// elem is a jquery lite object if jquery is not present,
// but with jquery and jquery ui, it will be a full jquery object.
elem.autocomplete({
source: autoCompleteDataService.getSource(), //from your service
minLength: 2
});
}
};
});
And using it in your markup… notice the ng-model to set a value on the $scope with what you select.
<div ng-controller="Ctrl1">
<input type="text" ng-model="foo" auto-complete/>
Foo = {{foo}}
</div>
That’s just the basics, but hopefully that helps.