We move the data into a seperate file services.js, and create a new module directory.services to fetch data.

Here we use a simple javascript object array to mock the data. In reality you will likely get them from database.

The employees variable contains all the data. For each employee entry, there are firstName, lastName, title and pic attributes.

To fetch data, we use $q. It is a service that helps you run functions asynchronously, and use their return values (or exceptions) when they are done processing.

It is not necessary here as the data is an in-memory array, which is instantly avaiable. In real world, fetching data take some time. And promise provides an intuitive and clean interface for dealing with asynchronous code.

In EmployeeIndexCtrl controller, we can use the resolve method to get employees array from promise. EmployeeService.findAll return a promise, it has a resolve method,

resolve(value) – resolves the derived promise with the value

promise.then(function(value) { resolvedValue = value; });

The value is the employees array. We need to assign it to the $scope.employees variable in controller.