 <p>I won't recommend to use <code>$resource</code>. It's the object that keeps link to the promise and when promise resolved it'll also contain data itself. So if you want to do some actions when data comes you'll have to assing a callback to that promise anyway. Use <code>$http</code> instead. It's lower level angular abstraction for async requests. And <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11850025/recommended-way-of-getting-data-from-the-server">here</a> is the way you can use <code>$http</code>.</p>