AngularJS non-async posting

Question 1

Going without promises is totally not what you want to do here. In fact, this is exactly the kind of situation where promises shine the most! Basically, you weren't using $q.all properly. You can just pass it a list of promises, and it will be resolved when they are all resolved. If any one of them fails, it will yield a rejected promise with the same rejection as the first one that failed. You can of course swallow that rejection via a .catch invocation that returns anything other than a $q.reject value.

I reimplemented what you had using promises. Both .success and .error are fairly limited, so I used the traditional .then and .catch methods here.

/**
 * Here we define a function that takes a property, makes a POST request to
 * create a tag for it, and then appends the promise for the request to a list
 * called tagRequests.
 */
var tagRequests = [];
var createTag = function(property) {
  tagRequests.push($http({
    method: "POST",
    url: '/api/projects/' + data.Project.Id + '/tags',
    data: ({ Name: data.tagAdded[property].tag.Name })
  }).then(function(response) {
    var responseData = response.data;
    data.tagAdded[property].tag.Id = responseData.Data[0].Id;
    data.tagAdded[property].tag.ProjectId = responseData.Data[0].ProjectId;
    return responseData;
  }).catch(function (err) {
    var errorMsg = "Error saving new tags. Contact support.";
    $.jGrowl(errorMsg, { header: 'Error' });
    // If we don't want the collective promise to fail on the error of any given
    // tag creation request, the next line should be removed.
    return $q.reject(errorMsg);
  }));
};

/**
 * We then iterate over each key in the data.tagAdded object and invoke the
 * createTag function.
 */
for (var property in data.tagAdded) {
  if (Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(data.tagAdded, property)) {
    createTag(property);
  }
}

/**
 * Once all tag requests succeed, we then map over the list of groups and
 * transform them into promises of the request being made. This ultimately
 * returns a promise that is resolved when all group POST requests succeed.
 */
$q.all(tagRequests)
.then(function(tagsCreated) {
  return $q.all(groups.map(function(group) {
    return $http({
      headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json; charset=utf-8' },
      method: "POST",
      url: '/api/projects/' + data.Project.Id + '/recruiting-groups',
      data: angular.toJson(group, false)
    }).then(function(response) {
      return response.data;
    })
    .catch(function(err) {
      var errorMsg = "Error saving recruiting group. Contact support.";
      $.jGrowl(errorMsg, { header: 'Error' });
      // If we want this collective promise to not fail when any one promise is
      // rejected, the next line should be removed.
      return $q.reject(errorMsg);
    });
  }));
});

I highly suggest brushing up on Promises in general, and then taking another look at the $q documentation. I've also written this blog post on the way promises work in Angular and how they differ from most promise implementations.

Question 2

This is exactly what promises do. Angular uses Kris Kowal's Q Library for promises. Check out the Angular docs page, has a perfect example of the promise pattern. Basically you would do the first call, then once it's promise returns success, make the second call.

Question 3

I had to alter my code a bit, and get some coworker team work. I went completely without promises.

I use a counter to track when counter = 0 by adding to the counter then upon success/fail i decrement from the counter taking it backwards for each completed transaction. When counter is at 0 I am done then call my next bit $http post. Angular Deferred:

var counter = 0;
    var tags = [];
    for (var property in data.tagAdded) {
        if (data.tagAdded.hasOwnProperty(property)) {
            tags.push({ Name: property });
        }
    }
    if (tags.length == 0) {
        groupInsert();
    } else {
        tags.forEach(function (tag) {
            counter ++;
            $http({
                method: "POST",
                url: '/api/projects/' + data.Project.Id + '/tags',
                data: ({ Name: tag.Name })
            }).success(function (response) {
                console.log(response)
                counter--;
                data.tagAdded[property].tag.Id = response.Data[0].Id;
                data.tagAdded[property].tag.ProjectId = response.Data[0].ProjectId;
                if (counter == 0) {
                    groupInsert();
                }
            }).error(function (response) {
                counter--;
                tagError = true;
                $.jGrowl("Error saving new tags. Contact support.", { header: 'Error' });
                if (counter == 0) {
                    groupInsert();
                }
            });
        });
    }

    function groupInsert() {
        groups.forEach(function (group) {
            console.log(group)
            $http({
                headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json; charset=utf-8' },
                method: "POST",
                url: '/api/projects/' + data.Project.Id + '/recruiting-groups',
                data: angular.toJson(group, false)
            }).success(function (response) {

            }).error(function (response) {
                recError = true;
                $.jGrowl("Error saving recruiting group. Contact support.", { header: 'Error' });
            });
        });

    }