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bob.ts
bob.ts

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Angular: How I Broke ngOnInit

So, recently I ran into an issue where one of my functions was not being implemented "at the correct time." The solution was to trigger it in another component via ngOnInit.

Moving the code was simple, but in the process I ran into an issue that I've seen before but not dug into.

The Problem

The issue is that I like to use fat-arrow functions in my code (() => {}) and somewhere along the way I converted an ngOnInit to fat-arrow. I unknowingly broke the OnInit lifecycle hook complete.

ngOnInit = async (): Promise<void> => {
  await this.init();
  ...
};
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The Resolution

The fix was actually pretty simple, I converted the code back to a traditional function pattern ...

async ngOnInit(): Promise<void> {
  await this.init();
  ...
}
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... and my function started working again.

Conclusion

Be careful (yes, I am telling myself this) as you may inadvertently write code that does not execute correctly. It was a simple mistake and one that was hidden by some layers of async behavior.

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