Is having a parent controller to manage a set of tabbed sections an anti-pattern for an angular application?

Question

A lot of times, I have long forms that I divide into multiple tabbed sections. Each section is managed by it's own controller and there is a parent controller that manages the whole view. I use ui-router for dividing such sections into states. Should I make a service instead of a controller to manage the all the sections but generally, I don't have business logic in their. It's mostly done for collection data altogether and passing it to an API using ng-resource. I know

Answer 1

I wouldn't really consider it an "anti-pattern". There are a number of ways to solve the problem. You essentially describe a Stepper form (here's an example from Angular Material: https://material.angular.io/components/stepper/overview).

Angular Material's example is very advanced and there's a lot to it. Essentially the form would be in a parent component and then each form control is inside each "step" in the template. So it reflects your current pattern in some ways.

There's also the consideration of whether or not you're letting the stepper affect the URL (useful for deep-linking and navigation forward and backward). If that were the case I personally would create a service for form and then use that to communicate to each step in the process. Depending on the complexity of your form this might be the most reasonable approach.