I had the same problem, This is what I did: I have a SPA with multiple views in the same page (without ajax), so this is the code of the module:
var app = angular.module('otisApp', ['chieffancypants.loadingBar', 'ngRoute']);
app.config(['$routeProvider', function($routeProvider){
$routeProvider.when('/:page', {
templateUrl: function(page){return page.page + '.html';},
controller:'otisCtrl'
})
.otherwise({redirectTo:'/otis'});
}]);
I have only one controller for all views, but, the problem is the same as the question, the controller always refresh data, in order to avoid this behavior I did what people suggest above and I created a service for that purpose, then pass it to the controller as follows:
app.factory('otisService', function($http){
var service = {
answers:[],
...
}
return service;
});
app.controller('otisCtrl', ['$scope', '$window', 'otisService', '$routeParams',
function($scope, $window, otisService, $routeParams){
$scope.message = "Hello from page: " + $routeParams.page;
$scope.update = function(answer){
otisService.answers.push(answers);
};
...
}]);
Now I can call the update function from any of my views, pass values and update my model, I haven't no needed to use html5 apis for persistence data (this is in my case, maybe in other cases would be necessary to use html5 apis like localstorage and other stuff).