AngularJS is not a server-side framework and therefore it is agnostic on that question. You can do it however you like and you can even create directives that keep the client model synchronized with server-side, but it doesn't come out of the box.
So if you want to poll a service periodically, you can do that ... or if you want to use a websocket and just leave a pipe open to refresh your client-side model ... you can do that too? Got it. Thanks.
Yep. The $http service in angular core basically does your standard Http stuff (with some nifty additions like caching and promises), but people have built services to do sockets, sails, handle server-side events, etc.
