Angular 2+ Change Detector for AngularJS 1.5.x

The idea here is to benefit from the Angular 2 OnPush mode in AngularJS.

Suppose you have a component like this one:

class UserPreviewComponent {
    
    config = {
        bindings: {
            user: '<'
        },
        controller: UserPreviewComponent,
        template: `<div>{{ $ctrl.user.firstName }}</div>`
    }
    
}

const module = angular.module('...', []);

module.component('userPreview', UserPreviewComponent.config);

That we use like this:

<div ng-repeat="user in $ctrl.userList">
    <user-preview user="user"></user-preview>
</div>

The classical problem is that we'll end up with 2 * N + 1 watchers where N is the user count. And if we had 10 watchers per component, we would end up with 11 * N + 1 watchers.

Luckily, we have one-time-binding and we can one-time-bind everything and end up with 0 watchers. But what if users can be updated? Are we forced to watch everything? What about enabling the watch explicitly per component only when the user reference changes (not it's properties)... YES ! Immutability !

Using the ng-steroids-change-detector module you can implement this behaviour as if you were already using Angular 2.

Install

yarn add ng-steroids-change-detector

Import required polyfills

import 'core-js/es6/array';
import 'core-js/es6/set';

Usage

1 - Add the dist/change-detector.min.js to your app or if import it if you are using webpack.

2 - Add the AngularJS module dependency to your modules:

angular.module('...', [
    'wishtack.steroids.changeDetector'
])

3 - Inject the ChangeDetector in your component.

class UserPreviewComponent {
    
    config = {
        bindings: {
            user: '<'
        },
        controller: UserPreviewComponent,
        template: `<div>{{ $ctrl.user.firstName }}</div>`
    }
    
    private _changeDetector;
    
    constructor($scope, ChangeDetector) {
        'ngInject';
        
        this._changeDetector = new ChangeDetector({scope: $scope});
        
    }
    
}

This will automatically disable the component's watchers except if the reference to the user input changes.

4 - Changes can also be triggered manually using:

this._changeDetector.markForCheck();