This will not work as only one controller is instantiated at a time (in your case).
A proper way would be to use a service. There is a nice article that wil help you with this.
See also this answer on how to create a service.
Based on those two resources you should came up with something similar to this:
var appModule = angular.module('appModule', ['ngRoute']);
appModule.config(['$routeProvider',
function($routeProvider) {
$routeProvider.
when('/home', {
templateUrl: 'home.html',
controller: 'ngHomeControl'
}).
when('/contacts', {
templateUrl: 'contacts.html',
controller: 'ngContactControl'
});
}]);
appModule.service('friendsService', function(){
this.getFriendList = function () {
return ['John', 'James', 'Jake'];
}
});
appModule.controller('ngHomeControl', function($scope, friendsService) {
$scope.homeFriends = friendsService.getFriendList();
});
appModule.controller('ngContactControl', function($scope, friendsService) {
$scope.contactFriends = friendsService.getFriendList();
});
There is a complete working JSFiddle so you can test it out. Please also checkout the console output to see when used components are instantiated.
You will see that controllers are instantiated each time the route changes - they are instantiated implicitly via the ngController
directive used inside templates. The service is instantiated only once and this is at the time when it is needed/injected for the first time.