Adding / Removing components on the fly

Question

I need to be able to add & remove Angular components on the fly. To do so, I'm using loadIntoLocation and dispose methods, like it:

Adding a component (from a layout manager):

this.m_loader.loadIntoLocation(MyComponent, this.m_element, 'content').then(_componentRef => {

    // Create the window and set its title:
    var component: MyComponent = (_componentRef.instance);
    component.ref = _componentRef;

    // init the component content
});

Removing a component (from the component):

this.ref.dispose();

It is nearly working: - if I add a component, and close it, it works - if I add several components, they work - but if I add component A, then remove it, then add component B, it seems like Angular gives me a reference to A, and keeps some old values (my components are draggable, and in this case the B will be created A was when I destroyed it)

Is there a way to make Angular destroy components properly, or at least to force it to create fresh ones?

Solution

As suggested by Tim,

quoting @tbosch's comment

Angular reuses previously created DOM elements by default

So to avoid this behavior, taken from the comment as well, you can use APP_VIEW_POOL_CAPACITY and assign it 0 as value.

bootstrap(MyApp, [provide(APP_VIEW_POOL_CAPACITY, {useValue: 0})])

Update

Note that since beta.1 APP_VIEW_POOL_CAPACITY was removed by #5993 and the DOM is being recreated correctly.

Comments

[Eric Martinez]

Can you reproduce the behavior in a plnkr? I have this one working, but I'm not able (and I don't know really) how to reproduce your issue

[Tim Autin]

Yep, I forked your plunker : plnkr.co/edit/lvQfnLfTImcRqRcxJaXU?p=preview . Click "Add new component", drag it somewhere, click "Remove", then click "Add new component" again : the component is created at the just removed one place.