AngularJS directives are only used to extend HTML and DOM elements' behavior. These are the special attributes, that start with ng- prefix, that tell AngularJS's HTML compiler ($compile) to attach a specified behavior to that DOM element.

AngularJS has a set of built-in directives like

☛ ngBind,

☛ ngModel

☛ ngClass

☛ ngApp

☛ ngInit

☛ ngRepeat

We can create our own directives for Angular to use them in our AngularJS Application with the controllers and services too. In this article, we’ll learn about some most important built-in directives like: ng-app, ng-init, ng-model, ng-bind and ng-repeat.

☛ ng-app

It is the most important directive for an Angular Application, which is used to indicate starting of an Angular Application to AngularJS HTML compiler ($compile), like a “Main()” function in any compile time language like C#, Java or C++ etc. If we do not use this directive first and directly try to write other directives, it gives an error.

☛ ng-init

ng-init directive is used to initialize an AngularJS Application data variable's inline statement, so that we can use those in the specified block where we declare them. It is like a local member of that ng-app and it can be a value or a collection of the values and as an array, it directly supports JSON data.

☛ ng-model

ng-model directive is used to define the model/variables value to be used in AngularJS Application’s HTML controls like <input type=’text’/> and it also provides two-way binding behavior with the model value. In some cases, it’s also used for databinding.

☛ ng-bind

ng-bind directive is also used to bind the model/variable's value to AngularJS Applications HTML controls as well as with HTML tags attributes like: <p/>, <span/> and more, but it does not support two way binding. We can just see the output of the model values.

☛ ng-repeat

ng-repeat directive is used to repeat HTML statements. Ng-repeat works the same as for each loop in C#, Java or PHP on a specific collection item like an array.