AngularJS access parent scope from child controller

If your HTML is like below you could do something like this:

<div ng-controller="ParentCtrl">    <div ng-controller="ChildCtrl">    </div></div>

Then you can access the parent scope as follows

function ParentCtrl($scope) {    $scope.cities = ["NY", "Amsterdam", "Barcelona"];}function ChildCtrl($scope) {    $scope.parentcities = $scope.$parent.cities;}

If you want to access a parent controller from your view you have to do something like this:

<div ng-controller="xyzController as vm">   {{$parent.property}}</div>

See jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/2r728/

Update

Actually since you defined cities in the parent controller your child controller will inherit all scope variables. So theoritically you don't have to call $parent. The above example can also be written as follows:

function ParentCtrl($scope) {    $scope.cities = ["NY","Amsterdam","Barcelona"];}function ChildCtrl($scope) {    $scope.parentCities = $scope.cities;}

The AngularJS docs use this approach, here you can read more about the $scope.

Another update

I think this is a better answer to the original poster.

HTML

<div ng-app ng-controller="ParentCtrl as pc">    <div ng-controller="ChildCtrl as cc">        <pre>{{cc.parentCities | json}}</pre>        <pre>{{pc.cities | json}}</pre>    </div></div>

JS

function ParentCtrl() {    var vm = this;    vm.cities = ["NY", "Amsterdam", "Barcelona"];}function ChildCtrl() {    var vm = this;    ParentCtrl.apply(vm, arguments); // Inherit parent control    vm.parentCities = vm.cities;}

If you use the controller as method you can also access the parent scope as follows

function ChildCtrl($scope) {    var vm = this;    vm.parentCities = $scope.pc.cities; // note pc is a reference to the "ParentCtrl as pc"}

As you can see there are many different ways in accessing $scopes.

Updated fiddle

function ParentCtrl() {    var vm = this;    vm.cities = ["NY", "Amsterdam", "Barcelona"];}    function ChildCtrl($scope) {    var vm = this;    ParentCtrl.apply(vm, arguments);        vm.parentCitiesByScope = $scope.pc.cities;    vm.parentCities = vm.cities;}    

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.20/angular.min.js"></script><div ng-app ng-controller="ParentCtrl as pc">  <div ng-controller="ChildCtrl as cc">    <pre>{{cc.parentCities | json}}</pre>    <pre>{{cc.parentCitiesByScope | json }}</pre>    <pre>{{pc.cities | json}}</pre>  </div></div>