The topic for my post this week is Angular. CS 343, Software construction, design, and architecture, introduced REST API frontend last week. I did not have a good grasp of what Angular is, so I read the article “Angular Tutorial: Getting Started With Angular 4”, by Shubham Sinha. The article breaks down Angular into easy to understand parts which are then explained thoroughly.
The article begins with describing the general history of
Angular and why it was designed. Originally AngularJS, Angular was designed for
the use in designing SPAs (Single-Page Application). SPAs are useful as they do
not require an entire page to be refreshed. Instead SPAs only refresh necessary
components. This allows for SPAs to act similarly to desktop applications.
The article then begins its tutorial, though I would describe
it as an overview of the details of Angular projects. The author goes into the
different parts of Angular and describing them each in detail.
- Modules:
Chunks of code with a specific task, such as classes. - Components:
Code that use API to control sections of the screen. Contains instructions for
client-side GUI. - Templates:
HTML tags that describe how to render components. - Metadata:
The code that informs Angular on how to process a class. - Data
binding:
The connection used to tie parts of a template to parts of a component. An easy
connection for data state and data events. - Directives:
Logic code for manipulating data: adding, removing, changing. - Services:
A wide category for encompassing anything an application my need. - Dependency
Injection:
Allows Angular to create new instances of a class with all its dependencies
that can be “injected” into another class.
From what I understand, the page code will be divided into
modules. The page view will be divided into components that use templates and
metadata to determine how to display the component. Directives are logic code
that manipulate data. Data binding allows for easy access to a data’s state and
events. Dependency injection inserts an instantiation of a class with all its
dependencies. Finally, services are simply anything an application may need:
value, function, feature.
I found that after reading this article I have a better
understanding of Angular. Angular can be used for client-side rendering of
data. By separating the page into several different components, Angular can create
SPAs that are dynamic and responsive. This article is informative and accessible,
I highly recommend this article to anybody who is getting acquainted to
Angular.
Referenced Article:
https://www.edureka.co/blog/angular-tutorial/
From the blog CS@Worcester – D’s Comp Sci Blog by dlivengood and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.