Controller from require is empty when using an explicit return

[MerlierR]

AngularJS v1.3.13

When a directive uses require: '^outer', the injected controller is {} in case an explicit return is used. (controller: function () { return ...; })

This issue does not occur in angular version 1.2.28

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/s6oyL2xk/

var app = angular.module('myApp',[]);

app.directive('outer', function () {
    return {
        restrict: 'E',
        template: '<div>Outer directive</div><div ng-transclude></div>',
        transclude: true,
        controller: function OuterController() {   
            return {
                data: 'outerController data'
            }
        }
    }
});

app.directive('inner', function () {
    return {
        restrict: 'E',
        template: '<div>Inner Directive</div><div ng-bind="test"></div>',
        require: '^outer',
        link: function (scope, element, attrs, outerController) {
            _.isEmpty(outerController) === true; // This should not happen
            scope.test = outerController.data;
        }
    }
});

[gkalpak]

This is due to a breaking changed introduced in v1.2.17/v1.3.0-beta.10 (see relevant changelog entry).

$compile: due to 5f3f25a,
The returned value from directive controller constructors are now ignored, and only the constructed instance itself will be attached to the node's expando.

Since v1.4.0-beta.3 the previous behaviour is restored and the return value will be used instead (see relevant changelog entry).
(But I doubt it is going to be backported to v1.3.x.)

[gkalpak]

Hm...I just noticed that whether theoretically my comment above should be valid, in the case of directive controllers, things work differently. (The behaviour is rather unexpected/buggy.)

This seems to have changed between 1.3.0-beta.19 and 1.3.0.

[pkozlowski-opensource]

Indeed, this doesn't sound right / expected, putting it in the backlog. At the same time people returning things from a constructor function are asking for trouble :-)

[jamestalmage]

Fix in PR #11326