# ``

Improve this doc

## Overview

Angular's `HTML compiler` allows the developer to teach the browser new HTML syntax. The compiler allows you to attach behavior to any HTML element or attribute and even create new HTML element or attributes with custom behavior. Angular calls these behavior extensions `directives`.

HTML has a lot of constructs for formatting the HTML for static documents in a declarative fashion. For example if something needs to be centered, there is no need to provide instructions to the browser how the window size needs to be divided in half so that center is found, and that this center needs to be aligned with the text's center. Simply add `align="center"` attribute to any element to achieve the desired behavior. Such is the power of declarative language.

But the declarative language is also limited, since it does not allow you to teach the browser new syntax. For example there is no easy way to get the browser to align the text at 1/3 the position instead of 1/2. What is needed is a way to teach browser new HTML syntax.

Angular comes pre-bundled with common directives which are useful for building any app. We also expect that you will create directives that are specific to your app. These extension become a Domain Specific Language for building your application.

All of this compilation takes place in the web browser; no server side or pre-compilation step is involved.

## Compiler

Compiler is an angular service which traverses the DOM looking for attributes. The compilation process happens into two phases.

1. Compile: traverse the DOM and collect all of the directives. The result is a linking function.

2. Link: combine the directives with a scope and produce a live view. Any changes in the scope model are reflected in the view, and any user interactions with the view are reflected in the scope model. This makes the scope model the single source of truth.

Some directives such ``ng-repeat`` clone DOM elements once for each item in collection. Having a compile and link phase improves performance since the cloned template only needs to be compiled once, and then linked once for each clone instance.

## Directive

A directive is a behavior which should be triggered when specific HTML constructs are encountered in the compilation process. The directives can be placed in element names, attributes, class names, as well as comments. Here are some equivalent examples of invoking the ``ng-bind`` directive.

      <span ng-bind="exp"></span>
      <span class="ng-bind: exp;"></span>
      <ng-bind></ng-bind>
      <!-- directive: ng-bind exp -->

A directive is just a function which executes when the compiler encounters it in the DOM. See `directive API` for in-depth documentation on how to write directives.

Here is a directive which makes any element draggable. Notice the `draggable` attribute on the `<span>` element.

### Source

### Demo

The presence of the `draggable` attribute on any element gives the element new behavior. The beauty of this approach is that we have taught the browser a new trick. We have extended the vocabulary of what the browser understands in a way which is natural to anyone who is familiar with HTML principles.

## Understanding View

There are many templating systems out there. Most of them consume a static string template and combine it with data, resulting in a new string. The resulting text is then `innerHTML`ed into an element.

This means that any changes to the data need to be re-merged with the template and then `innerHTML`ed into the DOM. Some of the issues with this approach are: reading user input and merging it with data, clobbering user input by overwriting it, managing the whole update process, and lack of behavior expressiveness.

Angular is different. The Angular compiler consumes the DOM with directives, not string templates. The result is a linking function, which when combined with a scope model results in a live view. The view and scope model bindings are transparent. No action from the developer is needed to update the view. And because no `innerHTML` is used there are no issues of clobbering user input. Furthermore, Angular directives can contain not just text bindings, but behavioral constructs as well.

The Angular approach produces a stable DOM. This means that the DOM element instance bound to a model item instance does not change for the lifetime of the binding. This means that the code can get hold of the elements and register event handlers and know that the reference will not be destroyed by template data merge.