Avoid using extra DOM nodes when using nginclude

Edit: After some research and for the sake of completeness, I've added some info. Since 1.1.4, the following works:

app.directive('include',
    function () {
        return {
            replace: true,
            restrict: 'A',
            templateUrl: function (element, attr) {
                return attr.pfInclude;
            }
        };
    }
);

Usage:

<div include="'path/to/my/template.html'"></div>

There is, however, one gotcha: the template cannot be dynamic (as in, passing a variable through scope because $scope, or any DI for that matter, is not accessible in templateUrl - see this issue), only a string can be passed (just like the html snippet above). To bypass that particular issue, this piece of code should do the trick (kudos to this plunker):

app.directive("include", function ($http, $templateCache, $compile) {
    return {
        restrict: 'A',
        link: function (scope, element, attributes) {
            var templateUrl = scope.$eval(attributes.include);
            $http.get(templateUrl, {cache: $templateCache}).success(
                function (tplContent) {
                    element.replaceWith($compile(tplContent.data)(scope));
                }
            );
        }
    };
});

Usage:

<div include="myTplVariable"></div>

You can create a custom directive, linking to the template with the templateUrl property, and setting replace to true:

app.directive('myDirective', function() {
  return {
    templateUrl: 'url/to/template',
    replace: true,
    link: function(scope, elem, attrs) {

    }
  }
});

That would include the template as-is, without any wrapper element, without any wrapper scope.

For anyone who happens to visit this question:

As of angular 1.1.4+ you can use a function in the templateURL to make it dynamic.

Check out this other answer here

With the right setup, you can define your own ngInclude directive that can run instead of the one provided by Angular.js and prevent the built-in directive to execute ever.

To prevent the Angular-built-in directive from executing is crucial to set the priority of your directive higher than that of the built-in directive (400 for ngInclude and set the terminal property to true.

After that, you need to provide a post-link function that fetches the template and replaces the element's DOM node with the compiled template HTML.

A word of warning: this is rather draconian, you redefine the behavior of ngInclude for your whole application. I therefore set the directive below not on myApp but inside one of my own directives to limit its scope. If you want to use it application-wide, you might want to make its behavior configurable, e.g. only replace the element if a replace attribute is set in the HTML and per default fall back to setting innerHtml.

Also: this might not play well with animations. The code for the original ngInclude-directive is way longer, so if you use animations in your application, c&p the original code and shoehorn the `$element.replaceWith() into that.

var includeDirective = ['$http', '$templateCache', '$sce', '$compile',
                        function($http, $templateCache, $sce, $compile) {
    return {
        restrict: 'ECA',
        priority: 600,
        terminal: true,
        link: function(scope, $element, $attr) {
            scope.$watch($sce.parseAsResourceUrl($attr.src), function ngIncludeWatchAction(src) {    
                if (src) {
                    $http.get(src, {cache: $templateCache}).success(function(response) {
                        var e =$compile(response)(scope);
                        $element.replaceWith(e);
                    });       
                }
            }); 
        }
    };
}];

myApp.directive('ngInclude', includeDirective);