How do I access the $scope variable in browser's console using AngularJS?

I would like to access my $scope variable in Chrome's JavaScript console. How do I do that?

I can neither see $scope nor the name of my module myapp in the console as variables.

Solution 1:

Pick an element in the HTML panel of the developer tools and type this in the console:

angular.element($0).scope()

In WebKit and Firefox, $0 is a reference to the selected DOM node in the elements tab, so by doing this you get the selected DOM node scope printed out in the console.

You can also target the scope by element ID, like so:

angular.element(document.getElementById('yourElementId')).scope()

Addons/Extensions

There are some very useful Chrome extensions that you might want to check out:

• Batarang. This has been around for a while.

• ng-inspector. This is the newest one, and as the name suggests, it allows you to inspect your application's scopes.

Playing with jsFiddle

When working with jsfiddle you can open the fiddle in show mode by adding /show at the end of the URL. When running like this you have access to the angular global. You can try it here:

http://jsfiddle.net/jaimem/Yatbt/show

jQuery Lite

If you load jQuery before AngularJS, angular.element can be passed a jQuery selector. So you could inspect the scope of a controller with

angular.element('[ng-controller=ctrl]').scope()

Of a button

 angular.element('button:eq(1)').scope()

... and so on.

You might actually want to use a global function to make it easier:

window.SC = function(selector){
    return angular.element(selector).scope();
};

Now you could do this

SC('button:eq(10)')
SC('button:eq(10)').row   // -> value of scope.row

Check here: http://jsfiddle.net/jaimem/DvRaR/1/show/

Solution 2:

To improve on jm's answer...

// Access whole scope
angular.element(myDomElement).scope();

// Access and change variable in scope
angular.element(myDomElement).scope().myVar = 5;
angular.element(myDomElement).scope().myArray.push(newItem);

// Update page to reflect changed variables
angular.element(myDomElement).scope().$apply();

Or if you're using jQuery, this does the same thing...

$('#elementId').scope();
$('#elementId').scope().$apply();

Another easy way to access a DOM element from the console (as jm mentioned) is to click on it in the 'elements' tab, and it automatically gets stored as $0.

angular.element($0).scope();

Solution 3:

If you have installed Batarang

Then you can just write:

$scope

when you have the element selected in the elements view in chrome. Ref - https://github.com/angular/angularjs-batarang#console

Solution 4:

This is a way of getting at scope without Batarang, you can do:

var scope = angular.element('#selectorId').scope();

Or if you want to find your scope by controller name, do this:

var scope = angular.element('[ng-controller=myController]').scope();

After you make changes to your model, you'll need to apply the changes to the DOM by calling:

scope.$apply();

Solution 5:

Somewhere in your controller (often the last line is a good place), put

console.log($scope);

If you want to see an inner/implicit scope, say inside an ng-repeat, something like this will work.

<li ng-repeat="item in items">
   ...
   <a ng-click="showScope($event)">show scope</a>
</li>

Then in your controller

function MyCtrl($scope) {
    ...
    $scope.showScope = function(e) {
        console.log(angular.element(e.srcElement).scope());
    }
}

Note that above we define the showScope() function in the parent scope, but that's okay... the child/inner/implicit scope can access that function, which then prints out the scope based on the event, and hence the scope associated with the element that fired the event.

@jm-'s suggestion also works, but I don't think it works inside a jsFiddle. I get this error on jsFiddle inside Chrome:

> angular.element($0).scope()
ReferenceError: angular is not defined