Angular 101: Pros, Cons, Features & Development Utility

Introduction to Angular

AngularJS was created in 2009 by Google and was started as a side project by Miško Hevery and Adam Abrons. It got its name from angle brackets (<>) used in HTML tags.

To define, Angular is a platform and front-end web application based on JavaScript Framework. It belongs to the MEAN stack

1. M – MongoDB NoSQL database,
2. E – Express, back-end middleware,
3. A – Angular, i.e. framework,
4. N – Node.js runtime environment stack,

which describes 4 main technologies that cover all the vital software product development aspects.

• It is used to build web and mobile applications using TypeScript and HTML. Mainly written in TypeScript, it carries out the implementation of core functionality as a set of TypeScript libraries, which can be imported into your applications.
• It has the capability to club end-to-end tooling, declarative templates, integration of best practices, and dependency injection so that varied Angular development changes can be solved with great ease.

One notable thing about this structural framework is that it allows Angularjs developers to utilize reusable codes, which leads to minimal coding and enhanced efficiency, which is why it is the logical choice of web development companies and is seeing great demand in the market. Its latest and refined framework helps you to design web applications, which are dynamic and responsive in nature.

About Angular Versions

Regarding its version updates, it has a lengthy history of version updates taking place at regular intervals of time. The Angular team has released different versions starting from Angular JS or Angular 1.x, Angular 2, Angular 3, Angular 4, Angular 5, Angular 6, Angular 7, Angular 8, Angular 9 lastly Angular 10.

Important Features of Angular

1. Angular CLI
2. CDK & Angular Material
3. Directives
4. HTTPInterceptor

• Angular CLI: Its command-line interface follows the best industry practices, which helps in carrying out any front-end development project. It has noticeable build-in features, SCSS support, or routing.
  • Ng-new and Ng-add support prove helpful for Angular developers in finding out ready-made features easily. Further, it has basic CLI like ng New, ng Generate, ng Serve, and Test, Lint, which eases the development process.
• CDK & Angular Material: Angular has been making improvisations in its CDK (Component Development Kit) with each version upgrades. Its two noticeable features are Virtual scrolling & Refreshing. These features prove helpful in the process of dynamic loading and unloading of DOM for preparing a list of high-performance data.
• Directives: With directives, you can create custom HTML tags which serve the purpose of custom widgets. Developers can use them to improvise behavior-driven elements. Further, it can also help in the manipulation of DOM attributes as per specific needs with directives.
• HTTPInterceptor: This powerful feature of Angular has the capability to intercept HttpRequest and handle it.
  • Several interceptors will transform outgoing requests before it passes to the next interceptor by calling next.handle (transformedReq).
  • You can use this interceptor for various purposes like caching, authentication, modifying headers, URL transformation & Fake backend.

Pros of Angular

1. Platform Compatibility.
2. MVC And MVVM Architecture.
3. Compilation with TypeScript.
4. Two-way Binding Of Data.
5. Faster Server Performance.
6. Modular platform.
7. POJO model for reducing or eliminating external dependency.
8. Testing process in Angular.

• Platform Compatibility: With Angular, you can easily build web applications and can reuse the same code & abilities too to build different Angular apps for any deployment target such as mobile web, web, native desktop, or mobile phone.
• MVC And MVVM Architecture: This type of architecture, i.e. MODEL-VIEW-CONTROLLER and better MODEL-VIEW-VIEWMODEL adds a great amount of value to the framework especially at the time of creating client-side applications. Apart from this, it also creates a foundation for varied features such as data binding and scope.
  • The best thing about this architecture is that it makes possible to isolate app logic from the UI layer and extends support in separating concerns.
  • The controller in the architecture receives all types of requests for the application and operates with the Model in preparing data required by View.
  • Lastly, the View utilizes prepared data and displays the same in a presentable manner. It saves a lot of time and tiresome work of developers.

Related Read: How to Know Which Software Architecture Pattern to Opt for?

• Compilation with TypeScript: As Angular is written in TypeScript, so it fully complies with the JavaScript framework and assists in detecting and removing common mistakes during the coding procedure.
  • Small projects don’t require enhancement of a great level, it is only required by enterprise-scale apps. Therefore, for this reason, developers have to prepare a clean code and need to check on the quality part on a frequent basis.
• Two-way Binding Of Data: This is one such feature, which makes Angular unique and stands out from the rest of its competitors. It basically synchronizes data between View & Model components.
  • This type of binding form makes sure that any type of change which takes place in the dom (view) gets automatically updated in the application and vice versa.
  • The data binding technique of angular links data to your View. In case, if there is any change in the data, then it gets detected and reflected by the angular framework and gets updated in View.
  • Therefore, it doesn’t require Angular Developers to write a bunch of codes or handle modified data.
• Faster Server Performance: Angular comes pre-loaded with CPU performance enhancement features and since it is written in TypeScript, the inherent framework of Angular JS has great speed in comparison to other native JS.
  • Further, it also supports caching out of the box and comprises of different toolkits, which play a pivotal role in enhancing server-side performance.
• Modular platform: Modules comprise of related pipes, components, groups, directives, and services, which can be clubbed with other modules for creating an application.
  • In Angular ngmodules, the whole team of developers defines the complete domain, workflow pattern, and specific capabilities that best suit an application.
  • Root or Application modules act as an entry point, where the whole thing is arranged and bootstrapped. To define modules, it can be said that all imports take place, which is defined for applications.
• POJO model for Reducing or Eliminating External Dependency: The POJO (Plain Old JavaScript Objects) model of AngularJS makes the whole code structure independent and easily accessible.
  • This further completely eliminates the need for adding complex functions or methods in the program. Besides, huge dependency on external plugins or frameworks is eliminated in a great way.
  • This model plays a vital role in keeping your code clean and makes the framework flexible for goal orientation.
  • Another good thing about it is that it requires less coding, which is why applications built using Angular take less loading time and delivers great user accessibility.
• Testing process in Angular: You might be aware of the fact that testing forms a vital part of the Angular framework. JavaScript codes undergo a series of tests.
  • The dependency injection style proves savior in carrying out test-driven development. It paves way for mocking and isolation of components, which leads to better writing of unit and integration test cases for any type of application.
  • Owing to the TypeScript support, developers can easily catch compile-time errors in the code during the early phase, which arises due to incorrect variables, etc.
  • The convenient testing procedure lets you easily develop any type of project from start to end & allows seamless testing of components.

Cons of Angular

1. Verbose & Complex.
2. Limited SEO options.
3. Support of JavaScript is Mandatory.
4. TypeScript + JavaScript Leads to Migration Problem.
5. CLI documentation has insufficient information.

• Verbose & Complex: The common complaint of the Angular development community is that Angular is verbose and complex.
  • Even though component-based architecture holds as its great benefit, but the manner in which components are managed is far too complicated to understand and deal with.
  • Other issues are syntax and 3rd party Angular specific libraries. Therefore, it requires a lot of development time for carrying out repetitive tasks.
• Limited SEO options: The major disadvantage of using the Angular platform is that it has limited SEO options and offers poor accessibility to search engine crawlers.
  • At present, Google is no.1 search engine, therefore having limited SEO options is a major concern, which can impact the visibility and popularity of any application.
  • If your primary focus for developing any type of application in search engine optimization, then Angular JS fails to achieve this objective.
• Support of JavaScript is Mandatory: If computers and laptops have access to your server, but if the JavaScript Support is missing or disabled then users will not be able to access your website or website applications.
• Hierarchical Tree-like Structure: Angular has layered architecture, which makes it a difficult framework to debug sometimes.
  • People, who are not familiar with this type of architecture or n-tier architecture can find some of the concepts complicated to understand. When it comes to debugging scopes in large applications, then it can really prove to be a difficult thing to do.
  • Besides this, all injections also have hierarchical architecture, which in turn causes Angular to have deep nesting issues. To be more precise, a deep hierarchical structure can prove complicated for novice users.
• TypeScript + JavaScript Leads to Migration Problem: One main reason why angular is not suitable for enterprise style firms is the MIGRATION issue. There is great difficulty in migrating its legacy js/jquery based code to an angular hierarchical structure.
  • With the rapid introduction of new versions and rapid iterative development cycle and community coming up with new features, enterprises usually find it challenging to adapt to the pace of new system updates.
  • With each new release of the Angular version, it becomes a pain point for developers to carry out up-gradation and several releases are not backward compatible.
• CLI documentation has insufficient information: Even though the command line holds great importance to Angular developers, but they have a common complaint in CLI documentation.
  • Developers describe that it has insufficient information in their official documentation on GitHub. Thankfully, there is the availability of a large community, which is there to help them out.

Application of Angular

• Seeing the functionality of Angular, it can be said that it is the base for developing single-page applications.
• Therefore, Angular can be used for projects, where the content is dynamic in nature in accordance with the movement and behavior of users. Angular offers the benefit of dependency injection, which proves to be a savior in changing the response of connected components in the best way.
• Some of the applications built using this framework are YouTube TV, Udacity, NBA.com, Google Cloud, Rockstar Games, and many more.
• Angular can be the best choice for project types like video streaming applications, weather apps, user review apps, travel apps, etc.

Signing Off

To summarize it can be said that Angular is the best choice when it comes to creating complicated and diverse elements as it has a full-featured and dynamic framework. It is ideal for fulfilling web development requirements and for creating high-end apps.

Opt for a professional angular development company, which helps you to leverage the best use of web development framework and Angular Tools.

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