Angular is a leading framework in modern web development, known for its ability to build dynamic, single-page applications (SPAs). In fact, Angular 2 was the first JavaScript framework to introduce single-page applications (SPAs) in web development. This is why it is widely regarded as a leading choice for web development due to its best features and strong reputation among developers.
With its powerful component-based architecture and built-in TypeScript support, it helps create more scalable and maintainable applications efficiently. Supported by a powerful CLI and an extensive ecosystem, Angular simplifies the management of even the most complex projects.
Let’s see in this guide how you can use Angular to build high-performance, scalable web applications and see if it’s the right fit for your development needs.
What is Angular in App Development?
Angular is an open-source front-end framework created by Google, used for building dynamic web apps, especially single-page applications (SPAs). It’s built with TypeScript, which is a more advanced version of JavaScript that helps make the code cleaner and easier to manage.
Angular’s framework is based on components that you can think of as the building blocks for your website. These components help you stay well organized so that your project can be maintained and updated easily as required.
It offers a component-based architecture, making it easier for you to build modular, maintainable, and scalable applications. With its powerful CLI, extensive libraries, and tools, the development process becomes much smoother and more efficient.
Also, there are directives in Angular to add or modify the behavior of the elements. This includes changing the layout of the DOM, tweaking the appearance or style of an element, and much more. Just like that, to support the developers with useful features, Angular also provides first-party libraries for routing elements, running animations, client-server communication, and several development tools.
Is Angular a Coding Language?
No. Angular is not a coding language. Rather, it is a framework built by Google for JavaScript that is written in TypeScript and uses HTML as its template language. Sounds confusing? Wait, let’s break it down.
JavaScript is a scripting language in which you write code as plain text. Whereas Angular is a framework, a tool that helps you develop applications quicker by using HTML elements rather than doing all from scratch.
Now, while it uses HTML elements, it provides excellent features that go beyond basic HTML and JavaScript. This way, in Angular, you get to create more efficient and interactive web applications.
Is Angular Front-End or Backend?
Angular is primarily a front-end framework used to build the user interface (UI) and handle client-side logic in web applications. It runs in the browser, handling things like displaying content, managing user interactions, and switching between pages.
While Angular mainly focuses on front-end development, it works well with back-end systems through APIs. You can easily pair Angular with back-end technologies like Node.js or Python to create full-stack applications, allowing everything to work together smoothly between the front and back end. For back-end development, you can check out other JavaScript frameworks.
Why Choose Angular for Your Project?
Angular has a lot of great features that make it a strong choice for many development projects. These are 13 advantages that you gain using Angular:
Advantages of Using Angular
Single Page Applications (SPAs): provide a dynamic, interactive experience by loading new pages without server requests.
Cross-platform development: enables building web, mobile, and desktop applications from a single codebase.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): use modern web capabilities for high performance, offline access, and easy installation.
Native mobile apps: can be developed using Cordova, Ionic, or NativeScript.
Desktop applications: can be created for Mac, Windows, and Linux while accessing native OS APIs.
Two-way data binding: Ensures the synchronization of the model and view. Any change to the user interface automatically updates the model structure and vice versa.
Responsive web applications: Angular has tools like Flex Layout and Angular Material for creating responsive layouts.
Highly Compatible: Angular apps are compatible with all sorts of platforms and widely used browsers like Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.
Automatic code-splitting ensures users load only the necessary code for each view.
TypeScript integration: improves tooling, code cleanliness, and scalability.
Ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation: improves performance by accelerating app load times.
Flexible templating system: supports various bindings, pipes, and custom directives.
MVVM Architecture: The Model-View-ViewModel architecture clearly separates the application’s logic and its presentation view from the user interface (UI), making it easier to maintain and test the code.
Dependency injection: service support make code maintenance and testing easier.
Built-in animation API: enables high-performance animations with minimal code.
CLI tools simplify app: component scaffolding and production-ready generation.
Angular has a few drawbacks to keep in mind. It's built for Single Page Applications (SPAs), which can limit SEO unless you use Angular Universal. Additionally, Angular's developer survey rankings are lower compared to frameworks like React and Vue.
Key Application Areas for Angular
Angular is highly adaptable and can be used to build a wide range of applications, including:
Application Type | Why Angular Fits |
Enterprise Applications | Best for large, scalable apps needing strong performance in enterprise settings |
Single-Page Applications (SPAs) | Perfect for SPAs, enabling smooth navigation without full reloads |
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) | Supports building responsive, offline-ready apps with a native-like experience |
Dynamic Content Applications | Perfect for dynamic apps like dashboards, with data-binding and fast rendering |
Content Management Systems (CMS) | Excellent for building modular, scalable CMS platforms with reusable components |
Real-time Applications | Coupled with WebSockets and Server-Sent Events, Angular’s ability to update the user interface dynamically and manage asynchronous data efficiently makes it ideal for real-time applications. |
Getting Started with Angular Development
Before getting started with Angular, it’s useful if you have a good command of these basics:
Prerequisites for Learning Angular in Application Development
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: These are the essentials for building and managing web interfaces.
TypeScript: Angular uses TypeScript, so knowing it will make development smoother, especially if you're familiar with JavaScript.
JavaScript Frameworks: Familiarity with frameworks like React or Vue can help you understand Angular better, though it's not required.
Command Line Basics: Basic command-line skills will make project setup and management easier.
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP): Knowing OOP principles will help with Angular's structure and data handling.
Setting Up Your Development Environment
To begin developing with Angular, you'll need to set up your environment:
Install Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager)
Install the Angular CLI globally using npm
Choose an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) or code editor (Visual Studio Code is popular among Angular developers)
Get familiar with the command line interface.
Basic Angular Concepts and Structure
To work with Angular efficiently, it’s more important you understand its main concepts:
Components: The basic building blocks of Angular applications, bringing together the template, data, and behavior.
Modules: Containers for a cohesive block of code dedicated to an application domain, workflow, or closely related set of capabilities.
Templates: HTML with Angular-specific elements and attributes that display application data.
Directives: Classes that add extra behavior to elements in Angular applications.
Services: Classes that handle non-UI logic and share data across the application.
Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your First Angular Application
Starting with your first project might seem overwhelming. No worries, we have got your back! Here is a step-by-step guide to your Angular app development and see how these concepts work in practice.
Installing Node.js and Angular CLI
To use angular, you must install an active LTS or maintenance LTS version of node.js. To check the version requirements, visit the version compatibility page. You can easily install Node.js from the website. If you have already installed it, you may want to check its version to ensure it meets the requirements. You can do that by running the node --version on the Windows terminal.
Download and install Node.js from the official website.
Open your terminal and run: npm install -g @angular/cli
Creating and Configuring Your Angular Project
In your terminal, go to your desired project directory.
Run: ng new my-first-angular-app
Answer the CLI prompts to configure your project (e.g., choosing CSS or SCSS, routing options).
Navigate into your new project directory: cd my-first-angular-app
Start the development server: ng serve
Your application is now running at http://localhost:4200/.
Understanding Angular Components and Modules
In Angular, components are the building blocks of the application. They display content and handle user interaction on the user interface. Components can be created in HTML and TypeScript and serve as a linkage between different parts of the application.
Meanwhile, Angular modules are just like a structural framework for organizing components. They are used to group related components. They also make separate logical units for different components. Let's create a simple component:
1. In your terminal, run: ng generate component hello-world
2. Open src/app/hello-world/hello-world.component.ts
3. Modify the component to display a greeting:
4. In src/app/app.component.html, add your new component:
Implementing Data Binding and Routing
Data binding in angular is a two-way process which means that data can be sent and received both. For that, you have to use the ngModel directive in the Angular application development. This creates a two-way binding between the model and the control. Any changes made to the model reflect in the control and vice versa.
Routing in web development refers to the response of the application to changes in URL. In Angular, routing enables users to navigate through different pages on the app without having to reload a new HTML page for every change in the URL. The application dynamically loads the contents requested on the same page. Let's add some interactivity and navigation:
1. Modify hello-world.component.ts:
2. Add FormsModule to app.module.ts:
3. Set up routing in app-routing.module.ts:
4. Update app.component.html:
This basic setup shows how to create components, bind data, and set up routing in Angular.
Advanced Angular Concepts
As you continue learning Angular, you'll come across more advanced concepts that will help improve your app's functionality and performance.
Angular Services and Dependency Injection
Angular services are singleton objects that organize the code and share it across other applications. They are mainly used for enhancing code reusability, organization, and dependency injections.
These services can be injected into different components using Angular’s dependency Injection system. You can create services yourself to use them in your components. Dependency injection is a great feature for code reusability. Angular lets you inject your services into a component that you wish to give access to.
Let's create a simple service:
1. Generate a new service: ng generate service data
2. In data.service.ts:
3. Inject and use the service in a component:
Angular Directives and Pipes
As the name suggests, directives in Angular app development are the set of instructions that modify the HTML elements. Note that there are two types of Angular directives: structural directives and attribute directives.
Structural directives are to modify the underlying structure of the DOMs, while attribute directives focus on the appearance and layout of the models. Coming to pipes, pipes help you transform data from one data type to another. You can also format or validate data through pipes. Here's a quick example:
1. Create a custom directive: ng generate directive highlight
2. In highlight.directive.ts:
3. Use the directive in a component template:
4. Create a custom pipe: ng generate pipe capitalize
5. In capitalize.pipe.ts:
6. Use the pipe in a template:
Handling Forms in Angular
Forms are always a major part of any application for user inputs. In Angular, there are two ways to handle forms. One is the reactive approach, while the other is the template-driven approach. The template-driven approach is for HTML templates where you just need to place directives like ngForms, ngModelGroup, etc, to handle user input data.
On the other hand, reactive forms are more explicit and follow a model-driven approach. Reactive forms use reactive programming models to handle user input and provide more control and flexibility over the form.
Here's a simple reactive form example:
Import ReactiveFormsModule in your app.module.ts
Create a form in your component:
Optimizing Angular for Performance
For any business, it is extremely important to have optimized apps for performance. Optimized performance means having high traffic and engagement on the application, a low bounce rate, and the app's unlikeness of crashing during high usage.
To optimize Angular for the performance of your applications, you must use some very useful techniques. These include using the OnPush change detection strategy, immutable data structures, pure pipes, AOT compilation, lazy loading, the trackBy option for loops, and much more.
Here are a few key approaches to help:
1. Use OnPush Change Detection: This strategy can greatly reduce the number of change detection cycles.
2. Lazy Loading: Load modules only when they're needed, reducing initial load time.
3. AOT Compilation: Use Ahead-of-Time compilation to pre-compile your application, improving runtime performance.
4. Use trackBy with ngFor: This helps Angular track which items have changed in a list, improving rendering performance.
Is Angular Difficult to Learn?
Yes, Angular can be difficult to learn because of its many features like Dependency Injection (DI), Services, and Components, as well as its use of TypeScript. However, if you're willing to give it the time, it’s a powerful tool for building large, scalable, and modular applications.
However, if you have a strong foundation of JavaScript, then you may find it easy to learn and grasp concepts quickly. Some new people find the framework very abstract. If you are one of them, don’t worry. We have listed some useful tips below that you must check out.
On the other hand, if you’re working on smaller projects or static sites, it might be more complex than necessary and could create challenges with SEO. It’s best for projects that require a powerful and scalable structure.
Tips for Mastering Angular Efficiently
Start with the basics: Ensure you have a fine understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Then Learn TypeScript: Learn TypeScript if you haven’t already. Angular uses TypeScript and to be proficient in Angular, you must master TypeScript.
Understand RxJS: Learn the concepts of RxJS and understand the way it handles asynchronous data. The more you are fluent in RxJS, the better you get at reactive programming.
Follow the official Angular documentation.
Build small projects to hold up your learning.
Join Angular communities and forums to learn from others and stay updated.
There are many resources available on the Internet, such as Stackoverflow, GitHub, and YouTube tutorials. You may explore, and learn from experts.
Should I Learn Python or Angular?
Your choice depends on your career goals, for instance:
For full-stack development, learning both Angular and Python is the best choice.
If you’re focused on front-end work, go with Angular.
For back-end or data science, Python is the better fit.
Python is a general-purpose programming language widely used for many things, while Angular is more specialized for building web applications. Here is a quick comparison.
Comparison: Python vs. Angular for Different Development Goals
Criteria | Python | Angular |
Primary Use Case | Back-end development, data analysis, machine learning | Front-end development for web applications |
Multi-paradigm: procedural, object-oriented, functional | Component-based architecture | |
Language Type | High-level, dynamically typed | Superset of JavaScript (TypeScript) |
Learning Curve | Generally easier for beginners | Moderate; requires an understanding of TypeScript and concepts like dependency injection |
Performance | Slower for web applications due to interpreted nature | High performance for SPAs with AOT compilation |
Community and Libraries | Extensive libraries for data science, web frameworks (Django, Flask) | Strong community support with a wide range of UI libraries |
Scalability | Highly scalable for back-end services | Scalable for large front-end applications |
Integration | Excellent integration with various databases and services | Seamless integration with back-end services via APIs |
Job Market | High demand for data scientists, back-end developers | High demand for front-end developers, especially in enterprise applications |
Best For | Data-centric applications, server-side logic | Interactive web applications, SPAs, enterprise solutions |
Which One Should You Choose Based on Your Career Path?
It comes down to what you want to do:
You can choose Python if you're interested in:
Backend development
Data science and analysis
Machine learning and AI
Scripting and automation
Choose Angular if you're more focused on:
Front-end web development
Single Page Applications (SPAs)
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Large-scale, complex web applications
Ideally, learning both can make you a more well-rounded developer, especially if you're interested in full-stack development.
Wrapping Up
We hope this guide has answered all your questions about Angular application development and that you are all set to start using it.
You can create great things with Angular if you learn and practice it properly. It might seem difficult for you initially, but things will become easy once you start with the basics. As you progress, remember that consistency is key—regular practice will solidify your understanding and make complex concepts more approachable. Happy coding!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What Is the Difference Between Angular and AngularJS?
AngularJS is the original version of Angular, built with JavaScript. Angular, on the other hand, is a complete rewrite that uses TypeScript and offers better performance, scalability, and modern development features.
2. What Are the Latest Features in Angular?
The latest version of Angular includes improvements in Ivy renderer, stricter TypeScript support, and faster build processes with Webpack 5. Additionally, features like HMR (Hot Module Replacement) have made the development process more efficient.
3. How Long Does It Take to Learn Angular?
Well, the time required in learning angular for application development really depends on your skill level and determination towards it. For most people, it takes 2–3 months, with daily efforts of at least 2–3 hours.