According to AngularJS's tutorial, a controller function just sits within the global scope. 

<http://docs.angularjs.org/tutorial/step_04>

Do the controller functions themselves automatically get parsed into an encapsulated scope, or do they dwell within the global scope? I know that they are passed a reference to their own $scope, but it appears that the function themselves are just sitting in the global scope. Obviously this can cause problems down the road, and I have learned through experience and education to encapsulate Further more, if they do dwell within the global scope, would it not be considered a best practice to encapsulate them within an object to be referenced like this:

```
    Object.functionName();

```

Rather than this:

```
    functionName();

```

So as to prevent issues that occur with the pollution of the global scope (ie overriding functions, etc..)
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/13362921', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1707160/']
AngularJS supports 2 methods of registering controller functions - either as globally accessible functions (you can see this form in the mentioned tutorial) or as a part of a modules (that forms a kind of namespace). More info on modules can be found here: <http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/module> but in short one would register a controller in a module like so:

```
angular.module('[module name]', []).controller('PhoneListCtrl', function($scope) {

  $scope.phones = [..];

  $scope.orderProp = 'age';
});

```

AngularJS uses a short, global-function form of declaring controllers in many examples but while **this form is good for quick samples it rather shouldn't be used in real-life applications**. 

In short: AngularJS makes it possible to properly encapsulate controller functions but also exposes a simpler, quick & dirty way of declaring them as global functions.
You can register a controller as part of a module, as answered by [pkozlowski-opensource](https://stackoverflow.com/a/13363482/1957398).

If you need minification you can simply extend this by providing the variable names before the actual function in a list:

```
angular.module('[module name]', []).
  controller('PhoneListCtrl', ['$scope', function($scope) {

    $scope.phones = [..];
    $scope.orderProp = 'age';
  }]);

```

This will work the same after "minification":

```
angular.module('[module name]', []).
  controller('PhoneListCtrl', ['$scope', function(s) {

    s.phones = [..];
    s.orderProp = 'age';
  }]);

```

This notation can be found under "Inline Annotation" at [Dependency Injection](http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/di).

To test a controller, that has been registered as part of a module, you have to ask angular to create your controller. For example:

```
describe('PhoneListCtrl test', function() {
  var scope;
  var ctrl;

  beforeEach(function() {
    module('[module name]');
    inject(function($rootScope, $controller) {
      scope = $rootScope.$new();
      ctrl = $controller('[module name]', {$scope: scope});
    });
  });

  it('should be ordered by age', function() {
    expect(scope.orderProp).toBe('age');
  });

});

```

This method of testing the controller can be found under "Testing Controllers" at [Understanding the Controller Component](http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/dev_guide.mvc.understanding_controller).