Directive template unique IDs for elements in AngularJS

Solution 1:

HTML

    <div class="myDirective">
        <input type="checkbox" id="myItem_{{$id}}" />
        <label for="myItem_{{$id}}">open myItem_{{$id}}</label>
    </div>

Solution 2:

UPDATE

Angular 1.3 introduced a native lazy one-time binding. from the angular expression documentation:

One-time binding

An expression that starts with :: is considered a one-time expression. One-time expressions will stop recalculating once they are stable, which happens after the first digest if the expression result is a non-undefined value (see value stabilization algorithm below).

Native Solution:

.directive('myDirective', function() {

    var uniqueId = 1;
    return {
        restrict: 'E',
        scope: true,
        template: '<input type="checkbox" id="{{::uniqueId}}"/>' +
                  '<label for="{{::uniqueId}}">open</label>',
        link: function(scope, elem, attrs) {
            scope.uniqueId = 'item' + uniqueId++;
        }
    }
})

Only bind once:

• If you only need to bind a value once you should not use bindings ({{}} / ng-bind)
• bindings are expensive because they use $watch. In your example, upon every $digest, angular dirty checks your IDs for changes but you only set them once.
• Check this module: https://github.com/Pasvaz/bindonce

Solution:

.directive('myDirective', function() {

    var uniqueId = 1;
    return {
        restrict: 'E',
        scope: true,
        template: '<input type="checkbox"/><label>open</label>',
        link: function(scope, elem, attrs) {
            var item = 'item' + uniqueId++;
            elem.find('input').attr('id' , item);
            elem.find('label').attr('for', item);
        }
    }
})