Directives got duplicated after an $animate.enter since beta.5

[Foxandxss]

I got an issue where a directive was being created twice when I did some $animation.enter.

The issue started on my repo: Foxandxss/angular-toastr#18 so I started researching about it and the change was on beta.5 (when $animate.enter started to prepend instead of append).

I managed to reproduce it here: http://plnkr.co/edit/oYmXPIeN16g75a3kQJQc?p=preview

Starting from the console error (In my code I use enter like that and I get no error tho). Technically that shouldn't happen (I think).

Leaving that aside, you can see the directive twice on screen. If you change templateUrl to template it works (much like #6006).

So I was wondering if I did wrong on the plunker (adding a third parameter resolves the issue) or there is a bug.

[btford]

@matsko any ideas?

[matsko]

This looks like it's a bug with the compiler / interpolation code. The prepending causes it to somehow recompile itself and loose track of the node order. @tbosch can you have a look?

[tbosch]

yes, will do

[jeffbcross]

After reviewing this with @tbosch we believe that the example should not be supported, as changing DOM within controllers is strongly discouraged. If the animation logic in the example were moved to the directive's postLink function, where DOM manipulations are permitted, the issues go away.

See updated example: http://plnkr.co/edit/KpFedIafuuPamEhtl5f0?p=preview

[tbosch]

Here is an updated plunker that shows the effect even without ngAnimate: http://plnkr.co/edit/gfYEpxitqe4ohFzj7oFf?p=preview

The call to $animate.enter will essentially call body.prepend(container), which will then result in an error during the compile process (see dev tools). The fact that you see the template doubled is only a side effect of the error in the dev tools, which also occurs when you use an inline template (see the commented line in the plunker).

Yes @jeffbcross is correct in saying that you should not modify the DOM in the controller, especially as the controller constructor function is called in the prelink phase (see https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/service/$compile#pre-linking-function).

Closing this...