angular $http / jquery complete equivalent

Question

Is there a way to emulate jquery 'complete' callback with angular $http module? I have some code I would like to execute no matter whether the request succeeded or failed and at the moment I find myself having to write this:

$http.get(someUrl).success(function(){
        successCode();
        completeCode();
    }).error(function(){
        errorCode();
        completeCode();
    })

but I would rather write something like:

$http.get(someUrl).success(function(){
        successCode();
    }).error(function(){
        errorCode();
    }).complete(function(){
        completeCode();
    })

I've tried also using the promise API but I end up having the same problem. Any suggestion?

Marleen

Answer 1

Update Aug 2014: .always has been renamed .finally in recent versions of Angular. Prefer .finally to .always.

Note that in order to support IE8 you have to call it with bracket notation as ["finally"].

---

You can use .always in AngularJS

This change is rather new (you could do that in jQuery for a while), you can see the commit here. This requires you to have AngularJS 1.1.5 or higher.

always(callback) – allows you to observe either the fulfillment or rejection of a promise, but to do so without modifying the final value. This is useful to release resources or do some clean-up that needs to be done whether the promise was rejected or resolved. See the full specification for more information.

Fiddle

Magic

You should mention it is in versions 1.1.5 and later. – Scalp

@Scalp Right, I've said it's rather new and added a link to the commit message, but I guess saying the version number is also a good idea - this is what I get for living on the repo :) – Magic

@Reno Please check which version of Angular you're using and the fiddle I added to the answer. – Magic

@BenjaminGruenbaum my bad I was using 1.0.7, it works like a charm indeed :) – Marleen

Tried the always callback, but for some reason the code inside is fired before the request is actually completed. So had to stick with promise.then :( – Mcferren

It doesn't seem to work with the current angular v1.2.15. Looks like always doesn't exist anymore, I'm getting an error. Any way to fix this? – Christenson

Note: The angular documentation includes the following proviso, "Because finally is a reserved word in JavaScript and reserved keywords are not supported as property names by ES3, you'll need to invoke the method like promise['finally'](callback) to make your code IE8 and Android 2.x compatible." – Saiff

I've plagiarized your answer on another question (Angular equivalent of .done in jquery). I hope that's OK. – Vermicide

@Vermicide it's not plagiarism since you provided attribution - plagiarism is when you claim the content as your own. It is explicitly allowed to quote and use other answers with attribution in SO - that's the content license (scroll to the very bottom of every page - it's always there). So to sum it up - yes, what you did is perfectly fine and you don't have to ask for permission or notify me in the future. – Magic