What is the order of execution of directive functions? The documentation doesn't seem to address this.
Ex
From answer below: http://plnkr.co/edit/79iyKSbfxgkzk2Pivuak (plunker shows nested and sibling directives)
compile() (changes made to the template within compile are proliferated down to linking functions)controller()preLink()postLink()on related note, here my understanding of exec order across the DOM.
Here is a demo (open browser JS console)
Given this DOM using directive foo:
<div id="1" foo>
one
<div id="1_1" foo>one.one</div>
</div>
<div id="2" foo>two</div>
...AngularJS will traverse the DOM - twice - in depth-first order:
1st pass foo.compile()
1) compile: 1
2) compile: 1_1
3) compile: 2
2nd pass: foo.controller() traversing down; foo.link() while backtracking
controller: 1
controller: 1_1
link: 1_1
link: 1
controller: 2
link: 2
Pre-linking function: Executed before the child elements are linked. Not safe to do DOM transformation since the compiler linking function will fail to locate the correct elements for linking.
Post-linking function: Executed after the child elements are linked. It is safe to do DOM transformation in the post-linking function.
Above excerpt is taken from the official docs on directives.
So, to answer your question, Post-linking/Link function is when/where you can safely operate on element.children().
element.children() are only made available for you to access within postLinkFn. One caveat is that your question is about the order of execution of directive functions and the template you have been referring to is simply not a function.
tElement in the compile function will affect each cloned instance). So in summary: template DOM (tElement) can be changed in compile, and instance DOM (iElement) in post-link.template is a property that gets passed to a function, and compile, etc are methods/functions).
