AngularJS

What is AngularJS?

AngularJS is an open-source Model-View-Controller framework which is analogous to the JavaScript framework. AngularJS was originally started as a project in Google but now, it’s an open-source framework.

AngularJS is entirely supported by HTML and JavaScript, so there’s no need to learn another syntax or language. AngularJS changes static HTML to dynamic HTML. It extends the power of HTML by adding built-in attributes and components and also provides the capability to make custom attributes using simple JavaScript.

Angular JS is perhaps one among the foremost popular modern-day web frameworks available today. This framework is employed for developing mostly Single Page applications. This framework has been developed by a gaggle of developers from Google itself. With the sheer support of Google and concepts from a good community forum, the framework is usually maintained so far. Also, it always incorporates the newest development trends within the market.

AngularJS Features

Angular has the following key features which make it one among the powerful frameworks within the market.

  • Model-View-Controller (MVC) – The framework is made on the famous concept of MVC. This is often a design pattern utilized in all modern-day web applications. This pattern is predicated on splitting the business logic layer, the info layer, and presentation layer into separate sections. The division into different sections is completed so that all might be managed more easily.
  • Data Model Binding – you do not have to write special code to bind data to the HTML controls. This will be done by Angular by just adding a couple of snippets of code.
  • Writing less code – When completing DOM manipulation tons of JavaScript was required to be written to style any application. But with Angular, you’ll be amazed by the lesser amount of code you would like to write down for DOM manipulation.
  • Unit Testing ready – The engineers at Google not only developed Angular but also developed a testing framework called “Karma” which provides the feature to create the unit tests for AngularJS applications.
  • Directives: AngularJS consists of a feature known as Directives that allow the designer to create custom HTML tags that function well as custom widgets. Additionally, they will manipulate DOM attributes.
  • Dependency Injection: A default dependency injection subsystem is available in AngularJS. Dependency Injection is often defined as a software design pattern that deals with how the components line up of their dependencies. The AngularJS injector subsystem helps the engineers in creating components, resolving their dependencies, and providing them to the opposite components as requested.
  • High Performance: Robust features like Filters, Animations, Form Validation, API Client, and Routing make AngularJS a strong framework. These features enhance the online development and make it efficient and straightforward.
  • Filters: Filters in AngularJS allow the developer to format the info without changing the first format. Angular contains multiple filters to format data of various data types.

Architecture

Angular.js using the MVC architecture, the MVC framework diagram as shown below.

  • The Controller layer used as the business logic. User events/actions trigger the functions which are kept inside the controller. The user events are a part of the controller.
  • Views are used to represent the presentation layer which is provided to the top users
  • Models are used to represent the data. The info in your model is often as simple as just having primitive declarations. For instance, if you’re maintaining a student application, your data model could just have a student id and a reputation. Or it also can be complex by having a structured data model. If you’re maintaining a car ownership application, you’ll have structures to define the vehicle itself in terms of its engine capacity, largeness, etc.

Cons of AngularJS

JavaScript support mandatory: See computers and laptops that access the server but their support for JavaScript is disabled. The associated users won’t be ready to access the website or web apps. If there are many such users, you’ll expect the AngularJS-based web properties to be less useful. However, this is often not the case with plain HTML-based web.

Inexperience with MVC: If you’re a developer who follows the normal approach and are completely unacquainted with the Model-View-Controller architectural patterns, using Angular are often extremely time-consuming. Just in case you’ve got strict deadlines to satisfy, this won’t be the proper thanks to going. An answer however might be to rent some expert if you would like to unlock the framework’s benefits.

The scopes: Layered and arranged hierarchically, scopes are often complex entities to handle if it’s the first experience with Angular. One of the main difficult tasks might be debugging the scopes.

Difficult features: The directives are difficult to use. Additionally, many AngularJS features like dependency injections and factories are often problematic for the more traditional developers. Either developer spends too much time to understand them or hire an experienced AngularJS development team.

Possible time consumption: The browser may take time to render pages of internet sites and applications designed using the framework. It’s going to happen because the browsers would be overloaded to perform additional tasks like DOM manipulation. However, this drawback is restricted only to old computers and devices. The smart ones, especially mobile devices, don’t find it challenging in the least.

Difficult learning: Rather than following a straight learning graph, you’ll need to face great difficulty in getting adapted to the framework. Moreover, the limited documentation available may further affect the training process. However, the day-by-day extending community is making it easier. Expert AngularJS developers consider these as minor delays as they freely advocate its exciting cons. The framework is certainly worth trying once.

Conclusion

Due to AngularJS features, it becomes the top popular JavaScript framework among developers for web application development. All this is often possible because angular provides a simple and efficient approach to a developer to make a one-page web application. It reduced the development time and solved slow working issues. Therefore, angular is employed in various applications like PayPal, Netflix, etc.

Even so, you would possibly run into problems, but those are “fixable” problems. Perhaps, developers like using AngularJS because it allows the developers to fragment their logic into modules, making the codes more granulated.