Accessing Other Components
The @ViewChild and @ViewChildren decorators provide access to the instantiated class of child components, allowing you to interact with non-private fields programmatically.
The
@ViewChild is a decorator function that takes the name of a component class as its input and finds its selector in the template of the containing component to bind to. @ViewChild can also be passed a template reference variable.For example, we bind the class
AlertComponent to its selector <app-alert> and assign it to the property alert. This allows us to gain access to class methods, like show().import { Component, ViewChild } from '@angular/core';
import { AlertComponent } from './alert.component';
@Component({
selector: 'app-root',
template: `
<app-alert>My alert</app-alert>
<button (click)="showAlert()">Show Alert</button>`
})
export class AppComponent {
@ViewChild(AlertComponent) alert: AlertComponent;
showAlert() {
this.alert.show();
}
}
In the interest of separation of concerns, we'd normally want to have child elements take care of their own behaviors and pass in an
@Input(). However, it might be a useful construct in keeping things generic.When there are multiple embedded components in the template, we can also use
@ViewChildren. It collects a list of instances of the Alert component, stored in a QueryList object that behaves similar to an array.import { Component, QueryList, ViewChildren } from '@angular/core';
import { AlertComponent } from './alert.component';
@Component({
selector: 'app-root',
template: `
<app-alert ok="Next" (close)="showAlert(2)">
Step 1: Learn angular
</app-alert>
<app-alert ok="Next" (close)="showAlert(3)">
Step 2: Love angular
</app-alert>
<app-alert ok="Close">
Step 3: Build app
</app-alert>
<button (click)="showAlert(1)">Show steps</button>`
})
export class AppComponent {
@ViewChildren(AlertComponent) alerts: QueryList<AlertComponent>;
alertsArr = [];
ngAfterViewInit() {
this.alertsArr = this.alerts.toArray();
}
showAlert(step) {
this.alertsArr[step - 1].show(); // step 1 is alert index 0
}
}
As shown above, given a class type to
@ViewChild and @ViewChildren a child component or a list of children component are selected respectively using their selector from the template. In addition both @ViewChild and @ViewChildren can be passed a selector string:@Component({
selector: 'app-root',
template: `
<app-alert #first ok="Next" (close)="showAlert(2)">
Step 1: Learn angular
</app-alert>
<app-alert ok="Next" (close)="showAlert(3)">
Step 2: Love angular
</app-alert>
<app-alert ok="Close">
Step 3: Build app
</app-alert>
<button (click)="showAlert(1)">Show steps</button>`
})
export class AppComponent {
@ViewChild('first') alert: AlertComponent;
@ViewChildren(AlertComponent) alerts: QueryList<AlertComponent>;
// ...
}
Note that view children will not be set until the
ngAfterViewInit lifecycle hook is called.@ContentChild and @ContentChildren work the same way as the equivalent @ViewChild and @ViewChildren, however, the key difference is that @ContentChild and @ContentChildren select from the projected content within the component.Again, note that content children will not be set until the
ngAfterContentInit component lifecycle hook.Last modified 1yr ago