AngularJS the best Solution for Successful Web Application Development

During the year 2012, JavaScript MVC frameworks and libraries with countless of those frameworks were released. Among others, developers and other users must have heard about Backbone.js and Ember.js. But the personal favorite of most developers worldwide is AngularJS. AngularJS is a JavaScript MVC framework created by Google to build properly designed and maintainable web applications.

What exactly is AngularJS?

Simply put, AngularJS is nothing different from plain HTML but actually is an extension to HTML with brand new attributes. AngularJS is a JavaScript MV*or MVW (Model View Wildcard) structured framework for dynamic web applications. Google maintains AngularJS to permit users to develop well-designed and easily maintainable web-applications. AngularJS employs declarative programming for building UI. Since AngularJS is client-sided so even when all these features are employed in browsers users can have access to the attributes of a stand-alone application.

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Why AngularJS?

AngularJS is an MVC framework that defines numerous concepts to conventionally organize your web application. Your application is defined with modules that can depend from one to the others. HTML is enhanced by attaching directives to web pages with new attributes or tags and expressions in order to define very powerful templates directly in your HTML. It also includes the behavior of the intended application in controllers which are instantiated due to dependency injection. The use of dependency injection enables AngularJS to structure and test the JavaScript code without any hassles. And last but not the least, utility code can be easily be factorized into services that can be injected into your controllers. Now let’s have a closer look at all those features. 

Expressions

AngularJS lets developers build highly structured web applications with very little effort. It is for this purpose that, AngularJS contains numerous concepts to separate the different parts of applications being developed.

In order to create the views of your application, AngularJS lets developers execute expressions directly within the HTML pages of applications. In those expressions, you have access to JavaScript code which gives one the ability to realize some computations in order to display what is needed. In the screenshots below, you can see a very basic expression and its result.

While expressions are used for small operations, In order to structure your web application, AngularJS gives one, a much more impressive tool, called directives.

Directives

Directives are one of the most powerful features of AngularJS. They permit users such as developers to extend HTML to meet the requirements of web applications. Directives let users specify how the web page should be structured for the data at disposal in a given scope.

AngularJS comes with numerous directives which permit users to build your fundamental application. The first directive most frequently used is “ngRepeat”. This directive permits AngularJS to create a new set of elements in the dom for each element in a collection.

Front-end Web Developers depend heavily on JavaScript or JS to create the interactive aspects of a website that users see in their browsers and it is well known that where there’s JS, there will most certainly be frameworks and libraries being used to streamline and break down its complex code. AngularJS is holistic JavaScript framework which gives AngularJS developers everything necessary to set up the front-end of a web application, with a compartmentalized and modular technique for web design and supporting a large support community.

AngularJS Basics

AngularJS is a holistically featured JavaScript framework, with the main objective of simplification. It is great for building dynamic, Single Page Web Applications (SPAs) and supports the Model View Controller (MVC) programming structure. It powers sites that include but are not limited to Virgin America, Google, and HBO’s mobile site for iPad.

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Other AngularJS highlights include:

• Open-source, front-end JavaScript framework which has been developed by Google
• A library of JavaScript code based on standard JS and HTML, with nominal modifications which means, it will be less likely to breaks
• Handles the heavy tasks of DOM manipulation and AJAX glue that once had to be coded from scratch
• Empowers the developer to use modular building blocks of JavaScript code that can be classified and are easy to test
• Can be added to any HTML page with a <script> tag

Tech differentiators of AngularJS include:

• Expressions, which bind data to HTML
• $Scope, a novel way of handling variable dependency and global variables

Two-way data bindings

• Controllers
• Directives, which extend HTML attributes. “Extending” is the key to how AngularJS works

AngularJS solves the problem of building dynamic web applications, permitting the developer to extend the functionality of HTML by giving them the ability to create new constructs with AngularJS directives. This effectively adds layers of abstraction to tricky DOM manipulation, cutting it down to simple elements that can be embedded directly into an HTML template. The most popular example of this is two-way data binding, a task which was once code heavy and is now consigned to just wrapping around your expression.

6 Reasons for a Web Developer to Learn AngularJS

Should you use AngularJS for your Site?

If you’re looking to construct a dynamic SPA with a sleek desktop-like user experience, AngularJS is the framework for your needs. SPAs are web applications that load single HTML pages and dynamically update that page as the user interacts with the application. SPAs use AJAX and HTML5 to create highly responsive Web applications, minus the constant page reloads. As a general purpose framework built for CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) applications, AngularJS is a good fit for most of the web applications. However, there are a few noteworthy factors to consider whether AngularJS will suit your needs.

There are many benefits to implement AngularJS for the front-end of your website. A major advantage is its role in the MEAN stack (MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS and Node.js), which makes it possible to utilize JavaScript as the only programming language for both the front and back end of your site. The developer will know when and where to apply it during the process, but the most important things to know about this framework are:

• The capacity to build powerful applications for example Gmail, with a great amount of ease.
• AngularJS is belongs to the “MEAN” Stack. MEAN can do everything the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack is capable of, but with the same language that, most probably is already being used on the site’s front end.
• Dividing up large-scale work with a team is made possible for Modularity and code organization. Modularity also makes the processes of testing and debugging a really easy task.
• Uses the shortest and most efficient code possible.
• Functionality-first thinking vs. Structure-first thinking make this framework establishes more focus on features through functionality-first thinking vs. structure-first thinking, which in turn makes developers’ tasks a lot easier.
• This tool pairs withAJAX for incredible speeds.
• AngularJS works well with a Ruby on Rails back end, and can be unified into a Rails workflow as they share the same ideology and code structure and can flow well from the front end to the back end.
• It’s great for top-down development as a development philosophy (the alternative is bottom-up development, which can be highly frustrating for your developer).
• AngularJS is capable of handle heavy user interaction via forms. Its validation side is excellent, and its admin area is great, too.
• AngularJS also has incredible tools and support from the Google community
• AngularJS also works well with the ASP.NET framework and C# language for the site back end.

Everything Changes with AngularJS 2.0

After AngularJS 2 initially graduated from its Beta release on May 2, 2016, a final official release of AngularJS 2.0.0 was announced on September 14, 2016. The AngularJS team has finally eliminated the tentative “-rc.x” versioning system for a more conventional and production worthy version. More than an update, AngularJS 2 is a major rewrite of the AngularJS framework being introduced with a large list of new attributes brought in with with AngularJS 2:

• AngularJS 2 is based entirely on components: Developers can say goodbye to $scope and controllers, welcome @components. AngularJS’s latest take on the Dependency Injection model has a component being fundamentally a directive with a template.
• Streamlined Directives: The new @Directive annotation enables users to create their own directive in a much easier way, by simply setting your selector, properties, and hosting listeners.
• ECMAScript 6 (ES6): It is worth pointing out that AngularJS 2.0 supports the latest JavaScript standard.
• Support for TypeScript: AngularJS 2.0 will support Microsoft’s open-source extension to ES6 which can be considered as a great benefit to .NET developers. This means developers can avail access to all the libraries, advantages, and technologies associated with TypeScript.
• Server-Side Rendering: Server-side rendering was a feature that was previously lacking in AngularJS. This has been included in the dynamic AngularJS 2.0 update since it was rewritten from the ground up. This is a faster form of rendering a view upon initial loading of the webpage in addition to link previews in message posts and progressive enhancement coupled with the advantages of a server-rendered content for SEO.

Why use AngularJS?

Even though there are numerous front-end frameworks available in the global web space such as Knockout, Backbone, Spline, Ember, and a lot more. AngularJS stands out from the lot for many reasons.

AngularJS minimizes the amount of code to be written for the respective application as it allows developers to reuse components of code to build the application. Moreover, it provides an easier way of two-way bindings and dependency injection. Also, it can be pointed out that since AngularJS is client-sided so all these things are happening in browsers, which gives users a feel of standalone applications or Desktop applications.

Some of the reasons why developers prefer AngularJS around the world and why AngularJS has become the top choice for modern application architectures are stated below:

1) Developers can create templates to reuse in the application several times.

2) Developers can use AngularJS to bind data to any element in two ways, and two-way refers to changing data will automatically change element and the changing element will, in turn, change the data.

3) You can directly call the code-behind code in your HTML.

4) Users can validate forms and input fields before submitting them without writing even a single line of code.

5) AngularJS permits users to control complete dom structure show/hide, changing everything with AngularJS properties.

6) Finally AngularJS permits users to write basic flow end-to-end testing, unit-testing, UI mocks.

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Conclusion

To sum up, AngularJS provides users with all the attributes they would need to build a CRUD application like data validation, data-binding, URL routing, reusable HTML components, and most importantly dependency injection. CRUD applications refer to create, read, update, and delete which are the four basic functions of persistent storage. These refer to conventions that facilitate viewing, searching, and changing information; frequently using computer-based forms and reports. This being said, Angular JS is currently the hottest solution available in the market for highly successful web application development due to its speed, efficiency, and ease of use.

You may also like to read: Career Advantages of AngularJS Certification