How can I test an AngularJS service from the console?

TLDR: In one line the command you are looking for:

angular.element(document.body).injector().get('serviceName')

Deep dive

AngularJS uses Dependency Injection (DI) to inject services/factories into your components,directives and other services. So what you need to do to get a service is to get the injector of AngularJS first (the injector is responsible for wiring up all the dependencies and providing them to components).

To get the injector of your app you need to grab it from an element that angular is handling. For example if your app is registered on the body element you call injector = angular.element(document.body).injector()

From the retrieved injector you can then get whatever service you like with injector.get('ServiceName')

More information on that in this answer: Can't retrieve the injector from angular
And even more here: Call AngularJS from legacy code

Another useful trick to get the $scope of a particular element. Select the element with the DOM inspection tool of your developer tools and then run the following line ($0 is always the selected element):
angular.element($0).scope()

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First of all, a modified version of your service.

a )

var app = angular.module('app',[]);

app.factory('ExampleService',function(){
    return {
        f1 : function(world){
            return 'Hello' + world;
        }
    };
});

This returns an object, nothing to new here.

Now the way to get this from the console is

b )

var $inj = angular.injector(['app']);
var serv = $inj.get('ExampleService');
serv.f1("World");

c )

One of the things you were doing there earlier was to assume that the app.factory returns you the function itself or a new'ed version of it. Which is not the case. In order to get a constructor you would either have to do

app.factory('ExampleService',function(){
        return function(){
            this.f1 = function(world){
                return 'Hello' + world;
            }
        };
    });

This returns an ExampleService constructor which you will next have to do a 'new' on.

Or alternatively,

app.service('ExampleService',function(){
            this.f1 = function(world){
                return 'Hello' + world;
            };
    });

This returns new ExampleService() on injection.

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@JustGoscha's answer is spot on, but that's a lot to type when I want access, so I added this to the bottom of my app.js. Then all I have to type is x = getSrv('$http') to get the http service.

// @if DEBUG
function getSrv(name, element) {
    element = element || '*[ng-app]';
    return angular.element(element).injector().get(name);
}
// @endif

It adds it to the global scope but only in debug mode. I put it inside the @if DEBUG so that I don't end up with it in the production code. I use this method to remove debug code from prouduction builds.

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Angularjs Dependency Injection framework is responsible for injecting the dependancies of you app module to your controllers. This is possible through its injector.

You need to first identify the ng-app and get the associated injector. The below query works to find your ng-app in the DOM and retrieve the injector.

angular.element('*[ng-app]').injector()

In chrome, however, you can point to target ng-app as shown below. and use the $0 hack and issue angular.element($0).injector()

Once you have the injector, get any dependency injected service as below

injector = angular.element($0).injector();
injector.get('$mdToast');

https://i.stack.imgur.com/7GsCz.png

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