Set repeat is an AngularJS directive to iterate over a group of elements only one time and not add any watch listeners. It works the same way as ng-repeat and uses angular templating engine to render it's results. i.e. set-repeat="message in messages" where messages is an array of objects. This iteration will not update if the length of the arra…

set-repeat.js

angular.module('setRepeat',[]).directive('setRepeat', function () {

  return {
    transclude: 'element',
    priority: 1000,
    compile: compileFun
  };

  function compileFun(element, attrs, linker) {
      var expression = attrs.setRepeat.split(' in ');
      expression = {
        child : expression[0],
        property : expression[1]
      };

      return {
        post: repeat
      };

      function repeat(scope, iele, iattrs /*, attr*/) {
        var template = element[0].outerHTML;
        var data = scope.$eval(expression.property);
        addElements(data,scope,iele);

        return;

        function makeNewScope (index, expression, value, scope, collection) {
          var childScope = scope.$new();
          childScope[expression] = value;
          childScope.$index = index;
          childScope.$first = (index === 0);
          childScope.$last = (index === (collection.length - 1));
          childScope.$middle = !(childScope.$first || childScope.$last);
          
          /**
          *
          * uncomment this if you want your children to keep listening for changes
          *
          **/
          
          //childScope.$watch(function updateChildScopeItem(){
            //childScope[expression] = value;
          //});
          return childScope;
        }

        function addElements (collection, scope, insPoint) {
          var frag = document.createDocumentFragment();
          var newElements = [], element, idx, childScope;

          angular.forEach(data, function(v,i){
            childScope = makeNewScope(i,expression.child,v,scope,collection);
            element = linker(childScope, angular.noop);
            newElements.push(element);
            frag.appendChild(element[0]);
          });

          insPoint.after(frag);
          return newElements;
        }
      }
  }

});

How could you force it to update when you want? Thanks for this code - very nicely done.