Triggering form validation programmatically in angular-js

Question

I am using a custom directive to submit a form programmatically however no form validation is applied before submitting the form. I have called $setDirty() on the form field and $setSubmitted() on the form but the form is still submitted even if the required form field is empty.

directives/external.submit.js

export default class externalSubmit {
    constructor ($timeout) {
        'ngInject';
        this.$timeout = $timeout;
        this.restrict = 'A';
        this.scope = {};
    }

    link($scope, $element, $attrs) {
        $scope.$on('submit-form', function(event, data){
            if( data.id === $attrs.id ) {
              setTimeout(function() {

              /**
              * set form and fields to dirty
              * this should be enabling validation
              **/
              var $formScope = angular.element($element).scope();
              var $formController = $formScope[formName];

              $formController.$setDirty();
              $formController.$setSubmitted();
              angular.forEach($formController.$error.required, function(field) {
                field.$setDirty();
              });

                // trigger form submit
                $element.triggerHandler('submit');
              }, 0);   
            }
        });
    }

    // Create an instance so that we can access this inside link
    static factory() {
        externalSubmit.instance = new externalSubmit();
        return externalSubmit.instance;
    }
};

foo/foo.controller.js

export default class FooController {
    constructor( $rootScope ) {
      'ngInject';

      this.$rootScope = $rootScope;
      this.item = {};   

    }

    save() {
      alert('Save triggered');
    }

    submitForm(id) {
        // if no form id given, use the first form in the content area
        if ( ! id ) id = $('form')[0].id;
        this.$rootScope.$broadcast('submit-form',{'id':id} );
    }

}

foo/foo.html

<form external-submit id="primary" ng-submit="$ctrl.save()" go-back="dashboard.home()">
    <input type="hidden" ng-model="$ctrl.item.id"/>
    <input required name="title" ng-model="$ctrl.item.title" type="text" />
    <button type="submit">Internal Submit</button>
</form>

<button type="submit" ng-click="$ctrl.submitForm()">External Submit</button>

Answer 1

The solution is to check $formController to see if the form is valid before triggering the submit handler.

link($scope, $element, $attrs, $ctrl ) {      

    $scope.$on('submit-form', function(event, data){

        if( data.id === $attrs.id ) {
          let formName = $attrs.name;
          setTimeout(function() {

            // get the element scope
            var $formScope = angular.element($element).scope();

            // get the form controller using the form name
            var $formController = $formScope[formName];
            $formController.$setSubmitted();

            // check if form is valid before triggering submit
            if ( $formController.$valid ) {
                $element.triggerHandler('submit');
            }

            // required to update form styles
            $scope.$apply();

          }, 0);   
        }
    });
}