Explain the service.js in AngularJS

Question

I'm quite new to AngularJS and NodeJS. I'm trying to develop an app using MEAN stack. I just looked through the sample code in the mean.io boilerplate. I created my own app referring the sample app. I'm trying to submit the AngularJS front end and expecting it to call NodeJs server side but it isn't working. I think service.js is messing up something. Here is the service code of sample app. Can any one explain what this code does with respect to Angular client side and NodeJS Server side.

'use strict';

//Articles service used for articles REST endpoint
angular.module('mean.articles').factory('Articles', ['$resource', function($resource) {
    return $resource('articles/:articleId', {
        articleId: '@_id'
    }, {
        update: {
            method: 'PUT'
        }
    });
}]);

Answer 1

It creates a new factory in angular called Articles. The Articles factory has the $resource service injected. The $resource object is used to setup an object for communicating with a RESTful service, in this case "articles/:articleId" the articleId will be pulled from the _id of the resource objects that are returned from queries using this $resource. When you call to update on one of the resources it will use the PUT HTTP Verb.

By itself this just defines the factory but doesn't actually make any calls you would need to inject this and use it somewhere like Articles.query();

From the docs

If the parameter value is prefixed with @ then the value of that parameter is extracted from the data object (useful for non-GET operations).