Angularjs directive's template updates, but link does not

Question

I have a directive with 2 way data binding scope, as following:

app.directive('channelStar', function() {
  return {
    restrict: "E",
    template: 'This works fine : {{count}}',
    scope: {
      count: '='
    },
    link: function(scope, element, attrs) {
      // count is showing in template, but doesn't get updated here
      // actually it logs old scopes value
      console.log(scope.count);
    }
  }
});

In Template in my routing (using ui-router and nested states) :

<channel-star count="selectedChannel[0].channel_dir_members"></channel-star>

Controller:

httpService.request(...).then(function(result){
    $scope.selectedChannel = result.data;
    $rootScope.selectedChannel = result.data;
    // $scope.$applyAsync();
    // $rootScope.$applyAsync();
})

Any idea?

Answer 1

link function only run once, if you want to deal with its new value, you can use scope.$watch to watch count .

scope.$watch('count', function(newValue, oldValue) {
  if(newValue){
     //do something
  }
}, true);     // here parameter true is for deep compare objects, no need to use it when just for string

Answer 2

you can also use below code in your directive. scope.$apply(function() {});

see below link to for further information: https://thinkster.io/a-better-way-to-learn-angularjs/scope-vs-scope