A "perma search" in AngularJS

A common thing in many (AngularJS) apps is to have an ng-model input whose content is used to as a filter on an ng-repeat somewhere within the page. Something like this:

<input ng-model="search">
<div ng-repeat="item in items | filter:search">...

Well, what if you want the search you make to automatically become part of the URL so that if you bookmark the search or copy the URL to someone else, the search is still there? It would be really practical. Granted, it's not always that you want this but that's something you can decide.

AngularJS 1.2 (I think) introduced the ability to set reloadOnSearch: false on a route provider and that means that you can do things like $location.hash('something') without it triggering the route provider to re-map the URL and re-start the revelant controller.

So here's a good example of (ab)using that to do a search filter which automatically updates the URL.

Check out the demo: https://www.peterbe.com/permasearch/index.html

This works in HTML5 mode too if you're wondering.

Suppose you use many more things in your filter function other than just a free text ng-modal. Like this:

<input type="text" ng-model="filters.search">
<select ng-model="filters.year">
<option value="">All</option>
<option value="2014">2014</option>
<option value="2013">2013</option>
</select>

You might have some checkboxes and stuff too. All you need to do then is to encode that information in the hash. Something like this might be a good start:

$scope.filters = {};
$scope.$watchCollection('filters', function(value) {
    $location.hash($.param(value)); // a jQuery function
});

And something like this to "unparse" the params.