How can I open an Angular Material menu from a controller function?

Question

I'm doing a check for a user state and would like to enable and disable a menu accordingly.

In the markup:

<a ... ng-click="ctrl.userMenu($event)"></a>

And in the controller:

ctrl.userMenu = function (e) {
    if (ctrl.user.has.something) {
        e.preventDefault();
        return false;
    } else {
        ctrl.openMenu($mdOpenMenu, e);
    }
};

However, this doesn't trigger the menu if the else case is true. I suspect a scope issue. I've also tried wrapping the menu service call in an anonymous function. The menu opens as expected if the call is made directly from the ng-click directive. Thanks for any assistance.

Answer 1

Turns out I was forgetting to pass the menu service along with the ng-click directive:

<a ... ng-click="ctrl.userMenu($mdOpenMenu, $event)"></a>
// ---------------------------------^

ctrl.userMenu = function (m, e) {
// -----------------------^
    if (ctrl.user.has.something) {
        e.preventDefault();
        return false;
    } else {
        ctrl.openMenu(m, e);
        // -----------^
    }
};