angular__angular/guides/bidirectionality.md

# Angular Material bi-directionality

### Setting a text-direction for your application
The [`dir` attribute](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_attributes/dir)
is typically applied to `<html>` or `<body>` element of a page. However, it can be used on any
element to apply a text-direction to a smaller subset of the page.

All Angular Material components automatically reflect the LTR/RTL direction
of their container. 

### Reading the text-direction in your own components
`@angular/cdk` provides a `Directionality` injectable that can be used by any component
in your application. To consume this injectable, you must import `BidiModule`
from `@angular/cdk`.

`Directionality` provides two useful properties:
* `value`: the current text direction, either `'ltr'` or `'rtl'`.
* `change`: an `Observable` that emits whenever the text-direction changes. Note that this only
captures changes from `dir` attributes _inside the Angular application context_. It will not
emit for changes to `dir` on `<html>` and `<body>`, as these are assumed to be static.

#### Example
```ts
@Component({ /* ... */})
export class MyCustomComponent {
  private dir: Direction;

  constructor(directionality: Directionality) {
    this.dir = directionality.value;
    directionality.change.subscribe(() => {
       this.dir = directionality.value;
    });
  }
}
```