AngularJS dollar sign $() usage

Question

I've been learning Angular and now I'm trying to understand a large piece of code that was given me, and it has a lot of $() in the code containing a variable inside and a method call $(variable_name).method() or even a CSS class inside, between double quotes $(".class_name").method().

I understand $scope well, but I get confused with the syntax I explained above. Can someone explain what is it? Thanks in advance. /Teo

P.S.: The code is a directive, so I assume JS don't have this syntax except for the Angular framework.

Answer 1

Angular uses a subset of jQuery called jqLite. Here you can read a documentation: https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/function/angular.element Using $() function is basically wrapping an element so you can call jqLite function on it an chaining them. In your particular example $(variable_name).method() will wrap a DOM node stored in variable variable_name with jqLite and then run method on it. $(".class_name").method() is another usage of $(). It works the same as querySelectorAll() but instead of collection of DOM nodes will return collection of jqLite wraped nodes and then do the same - run method on each of them.