[angularjs] is there a post render callback for Angular JS directive?

Although my answer is not related to datatables it addresses the issue of DOM manipulation and e.g. jQuery plugin initialization for directives used on elements which have their contents updated in async manner.

Instead of implementing a timeout one could just add a watch that will listen to content changes (or even additional external triggers).

In my case I used this workaround for initializing a jQuery plugin once the ng-repeat was done which created my inner DOM - in another case I used it for just manipulating the DOM after the scope property was altered at controller. Here is how I did ...

HTML:

<div my-directive my-directive-watch="!!myContent">{{myContent}}</div>

JS:

app.directive('myDirective', [ function(){
    return {
        restrict : 'A',
        scope : {
            myDirectiveWatch : '='
        },
        compile : function(){
            return {
                post : function(scope, element, attributes){

                    scope.$watch('myDirectiveWatch', function(newVal, oldVal){
                        if (newVal !== oldVal) {
                            // Do stuff ...
                        }
                    });

                }
            }
        }
    }
}]);

Note: Instead of just casting the myContent variable to bool at my-directive-watch attribute one could imagine any arbitrary expression there.

Note: Isolating the scope like in the above example can only be done once per element - trying to do this with multiple directives on the same element will result in a $compile:multidir Error - see: https://docs.angularjs.org/error/$compile/multidir