angularjs - Run a controller function whenever a view is opened/shown

Question

I'm building an app with angular+ionic that uses a classic three-button menu at the bottom with three ion-tabs in it. When a user clicks a tab, that template opens through ui-router.

I have states like this:

$stateProvider
  .state('other', {
    url: "/other",
    abstract: true,
    templateUrl: "templates/other/other.html"
})

In the template I do something like:

<ion-nav-view name="other" ng-init="doSomething()"></ion-nav-view>

I'm aware that I can write the doSomething() function in my controller and just call it manually there. That gives me the same problem though. I can't seem to figure out how to call the doSomething() function more than once, whenever somebody opens that view.

Right now, the doSomething() function gets called just fine, but only the first time that view/tab gets opened by the user. I'd like to call a function (to update geolocation) whenever a user opens that view or tab.

What would be a correct way to implement that?

Answer 1

By default, your controllers were cache and that is why your controller only fired once. To turn off caching for a certain controller you have to modify your .config(..).state and set the cache option to false. eg :

  .state('myApp', {
    cache: false,
    url: "/form",
    views: {
      'menuContent': {
        templateUrl: "templates/form.html",
        controller: 'formCtrl'
      }
    }
  })

for further reading please visit http://ionicframework.com/docs/api/directive/ionNavView/