You aren't limited in using the built-in field editor views (like checkbox, date, datetime, ...) but you can easily plug in your own custom ones.
It's just a matter of pointing the UIOMaticField attribute to the view location
[UIOMaticField(Name = "Owner", Description = "Select the owner of the dog", View = "~/App_Plugins/Example/picker.person.html")]
API Controller
[PluginController("Example")]
public class ExampleApiController: UmbracoAuthorizedJsonController
{
public IEnumerable<dynamic> GetAll()
{
var query = new Sql().Select("*").From("People");
return DatabaseContext.Database.Fetch<dynamic>(query);
}
}
AngularJS View
<div ng-controller="Example.Picker.Person">
<select
ng-model="property.value"
ng-options='person.Id as (person.FirstName + " " + person.LastName) for person in persons'>
<option value="">---Please select---</option>
</select><br>
</div>
As you see this is very similar to creating custom Umbraco property editors, the main difference is that we'll be working with the property.value object (and not model.value)