It’s hard to imagine the development of a modern single page application without Angular.js. Let’s figure out why to choose AngularJS would be a right decision for your project.
First of all, what is Angular.js frontend framework? It’s an open source framework (and not a library!) that allows to create hip and handy single page applications (SPAs). After its launch in 2009 Angular.js quickly gained popularity and is not going to lose its ground. It is truly the most popular JavaScript framework — it has been holding first place on GitHub by forks and stars for a long time.
Here we listed comprehensive reasons for choosing AngularJS for your project.
1. Google's Ongoing Support
A prominent advantage of AngularJS lies in the steadfast support it receives from Google. The tech giant extends long-term support (LTS) for Angular, ensuring the seamless scaling of Angular web applications. Google's commitment includes compatibility with all upgrades and versions of Angular, fostering a robust development environment. The dedicated Angular team at Google actively engages with the open-source community, consistently delivering updates, addressing bugs, and providing valuable insights to developers. This collaborative effort empowers developers to craft distinctive, user-friendly applications utilizing Google's suite of web tools. Furthermore, the expansive and vibrant developer community associated with Angular contributes to continuous framework enhancement, knowledge-sharing, and problem-solving. Google's unwavering support remains a pivotal force propelling the ongoing success and evolution of Angular.
2. Declarative Code Style
Declarative paradigm is used for creating patterns in Angular.js. It makes code more lightweight, as well as easier to read and support since instead of describing all the steps needed for achieve something, we describe only the necessary end result. For example, compare JavaScript code:
var students =[{name:'Sara Connor', score:'97'},{name:'John Connor', score:'60'},{...}]; var studentsList = document.getElementById('students-list'); students.forEach(function(e){var studentEntry = document.createElement('li'), studentName = document.createElement('span'), studentScore = document.createElement('span'); studentName.innerHTML= e.name; studentScore.innerHTML= e.score; studentEntry.appendChild(studentName); studentEntry.appendChild(studentScore); studentList.appendChild(studentEntry);});
And AngularJS code:
<div ng-controller="studentsController as studentsCrtl"><div ng-repeat="student in studentsCrtl.students"> Name:<span class="name">{{student.name}}</span> Title:<span class="title">{{student.title}}</span> </div></div>
3. Code Consistency and Reusability
A) Consistency:
Ensuring consistency in a codebase is crucial for enhancing usability and maintainability. Consistent code minimizes the risk of bugs, elevates code quality, and streamlines collaboration among developers. AngularJS facilitates code consistency through both the documentation style guide and the Angular CLI (command line interface). This structural framework encompasses services, modules, pipes, components, and directives.
These components, integral to constructing the AngularJS web framework, adhere to a standardized approach. This uniformity offers several advantages, including simplified maintenance, improved readability, and streamlined unit testing. AngularJS's component-based architecture fosters high reusability, simplifying the development process.
B) Reusability:
Code reusability is a fundamental aspect of development that enhances code efficiency and quality. In AngularJS web development, code reusability is achieved through components, services, pipes, and directives, all of which are inherent to Angular. In Angular-based web applications, a tree of components forms the backbone of the user interface. Each component acts as a fundamental building block, capable of being utilized in various sections of an application.
The benefits of code reusability in Angular include time savings, improved maintainability, increased consistency, enhanced collaboration, and simplified testing. These advantages collectively contribute to a faster, more efficient, and higher-quality development process.
4. Fast Development Time
With a right approach you can use Angular.js even for creating big applications.
5. MVC Out Of The Box
AngularJS uses MVC architectural pattern that separates application logics, view and data:
It allows to create single page applications. Angular.js has $http service for communicating with remote HTTP servers using XMLHttpRequest and JSONP requests. When transferring JavaScript object to the server, it is automatically transformed into JSON string. When getting response, service also tries to transform JSON string into JavaScript. Using $http you can create your own service with full control over URL and data processing.
6. SPA and PWA-oriented Features
Angular.js and SPAs simply belong together. For example, Angular.js provides forms validation capabilities. If a page uses forms, FormController writes down their states. Using this data we can change behavior of the HTML elements in UI, for example, hide button Clear form if it is empty). Angular.js has build-in validators for error handling (required, ng-required, ng-minlength, ng-pattern, etc.) but you can create your own validators if you need them. It is possible to show error messages for the whole form or for separate fields.
Patterns and templates in Angular.js are made of HTML code complemented with Angular.js elements and attributes. Framework complements pattern with data from the model to show the user a dynamic page. Angular.js uses filters for processing data and formatting values received from the model. They allow you to show user only necessary information without changing the source data.
Progressive Web Applications (PWAs):
Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) seamlessly blend the strengths of mobile and web apps to provide an accessible experience directly through web browsers. PWAs aim to enhance user experience by offering offline functionality, reducing reliance on network connectivity. Angular streamlines PWA development with features like Service Workers, Angular Material, Angular's CLI, Angular Universal, and the Angular router. These tools empower developers to create PWAs that deliver optimal performance and user engagement.
7. Modularity
In Angular.js you can create applications combining separate modules. Such modules can depend on each other or be autonomous. For example, in latter case you can use Facebook login module in several parts of the application, such as login and order page. Thanks to the build-in dependencies implementation mechanism Angular.js independently identifies situation when additional objects should be provided, provides them and binds them together.
8. Ready-made Solutions
What’s important, there’re various solutions for Angular.js that solve a variety of tasks with ready-made modules. For example, there’re several modules for routing, with ui-router being the most popular one or you can use ui-grid and ng-table for working with tables.
Since AngularJS doesn’t require you to follow strict project structure, you can create applications with a pretty varied structure. It is also possible to use AngularJS for creating so called hybrid applications. You can learn about using AngularJS for mobile developmenthere.
9. Two-way Data Binding
AngularJS boasts an exceptional feature known as two-way data binding, greatly enhancing coding efficiency and saving developers valuable time. This feature ensures automatic synchronization between the data model and the view in real-time. Consequently, any alterations made in the view are promptly reflected in the underlying data model. This establishes a seamless connection between the data in your component and the UI elements of your Angular app.
For instance, if a user inputs data into a field linked to a variable, the variable undergoes real-time updates without requiring additional code. This results in a responsive and smooth user experience. The bi-directional data flow eliminates the need for manual synchronization, reducing the amount of boilerplate code developers typically write during data updates. There is no longer a necessity for event handlers or listeners to update the data model when users interact with the view - updates occur automatically, courtesy of two-way data binding.
This feature simplifies the application's presentation layer and enhances the maintainability of your codebase. The tight connection between the UI and data model facilitates easy tracking and management of changes in the app's state. The outcome is a cleaner, more organized codebase and accelerated development cycles.
10. Testing Simplicity
Parts of the application are placed inside Angular.js modules that are easy to manipulate. Module separation allows you to load only necessary services and effectively perform automatic testing. Also, if you follow “one file — one module” principle, there’s no need to remember module loading order.
Despite the awesome AngularJS features mentioned above, it has several drawbacks:
- Not easy to learn. It might be not easy to learn how to use Angular.js framework if previously you used jQuery library that relies on DOM tree manipulation.
- Slowing down if over 2000 event watchers are used.
- No backward compatibility. with the 2nd version. Of course, you can already start preparing your code for migration but there’re no guarantees that everything will happen as planned.
Nonetheless, Angular.js is a great multifunctional framework that allows you to create popular single page applications where data and view are separated according to the MVC pattern.
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