Angular pass a Component as ng-template of another Component

Question

In my Angular 6 app I need to pass a Component to another Component as its ng-template.

The reason is that I have a Component A that I need to replicate many times, but each time it has to include different components (let's call them Component B and Component C) which have the same Inputs.

Component A template:

<div class="row-detail-panel">
  <h4 class="row-detail-panel-title">{{ newEntity ? 'Add new' : 'Edit this'}} {{ entityName }}</h4>

  <!--THIS IS THE COMPONENT I WANT TO INJECT-->
  <app-component-b
    [inline]="true"
    [form]="form"
  ></app-component-b>
  <!--END-->

  <!--some more html code here-->
</div>

And I create a Component A instance using:

<app-component-a
  [entity]="row"
  [entityName]="entityName"
></app-component-a>

---

So I thought about using ng-template, so changing the Component A template as follows:

<div class="row-detail-panel">
  <h4 class="row-detail-panel-title">{{ newEntity ? 'Add new' : 'Edit this'}} {{ entityName }}</h4>

  <ng-template></ng-template>

  <!--some more html code here-->
</div>

And creating a Component A instance using:

<app-component-a
  [entity]="row"
  [entityName]="entityName"
>
  <app-component-b
    [inline]="true"
    [form]="form" <!--PROBLEM: "form" does not exist here-->
  ></app-component-b>
</app-component-a>

So I can easily inject Component C instead of Component B as Component A's ng-template:

<app-component-a
  [entity]="row"
  [entityName]="entityName"
>
  <app-component-c
    [inline]="true"
    [form]="form" <!--PROBLEM: "form" does not exist here-->
  ></app-component-c>
</app-component-a>

PROBLEM:

the variable form that I need to inject to Component B or Component C exists only inside Component A and not in Component A's parent (for some reasons I cannot move it one level up).

How can I solve this problem?

Answer 1

What you can do is this:

When you call component A, you pass an ng-template to that as follows:

<app-component-a> 
   <ng-template *ngIf=”condition; else elseBlock”> 
      <app-component-b></app-component-b> 
   </ng-template> 
   <ng-template #elseBlock> 
      <app-component-c></app-component-c> 
   </ng-template>
</app-component-a> 

Now in your app-component-a.ts you do this:

@ContentChild(TemplateRef) template: TemplateRef;

So basically template will get component b or c based on your condition.

And then in component A template, you do this:

<ng-container [ngTemplateOutlet]="template"></ng-container>

So now your ng-container will get Component B or C based on your condition.

As far as your form is concerned, i'm afraid the only thing I can think of is to create a service and provide it in component A, inject it in A,B and C and share the form in that service.

But if you include component B and C the way I have shown above, Angular will handle creation and destruction of your B and C components on it's own.

Otherwise when your ng-template condition changes, your component B will not be destroyed when component C is instantiated.

Edit:

One more thing I can think of is that if you are not calling component B or C as soon as A is instantiated, you could also emit (@Output) form from A to A's parent oninit of A. This way when B or C is called, A's parent will have access to form and it can pass it to B or C.