As @Renan mentioned, ng-include creates a new child scope. This scope prototypically inherits (see dashed lines below) from the HomeCtrl scope. ng-model="lineText" actually creates a primitive scope property on the child scope, not HomeCtrl's scope. This child scope is not accessible to the parent/HomeCtrl scope:
To store what the user typed into HomeCtrl's $scope.lines array, I suggest you pass the value to the addLine function:
<form ng-submit="addLine(lineText)">
In addition, since lineText is owned by the ngInclude scope/partial, I feel it should be responsible for clearing it:
<form ng-submit="addLine(lineText); lineText=''">
Function addLine() would thus become:
$scope.addLine = function(lineText) {
$scope.chat.addLine(lineText);
$scope.lines.push({
text: lineText
});
};
Alternatives:
- define an object property on HomeCtrl's $scope, and use that in the partial:
ng-model="someObj.lineText; fiddle - not recommended, this is more of a hack: use $parent in the partial to create/access a
lineTextproperty on the HomeCtrl $scope:ng-model="$parent.lineText"; fiddle
It is a bit involved to explain why the above two alternatives work, but it is fully explained here: What are the nuances of scope prototypal / prototypical inheritance in AngularJS?
I don't recommend using this in the addLine() function. It becomes much less clear which scope is being accessed/manipulated.