Angular is a web development framework based on JavaScript. It is open-source and is maintained by Google and the open-source community. It is mainly used to develop single-page applications (SPA). It simplifies the development and the testing of applications by having implemented the MVC (model-view-controller) and MVVM (model-view-ViewModel) architectures at its core along with other components required for creating web applications.
There are several reasons to choose AngularJS, which are listed below:
- Easier, Simpler, and Intuitive Framework: We can create beautiful web applications by making use of HTML and CSS while the logical part can be done via JavaScript. As all of these 3 languages are simple, easy to learn, and moreover already known to experienced developers developing web apps, AngularJS is more relevant in web development projects. There are special attributes in HTML which control the execution of the application. It determines the content of the application but not the logic part of it. Thus it follows the principle of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).
- Inherent Presence for MVC Architecture: There are many frameworks in which the developer is required to develop separate MVC components and then he himself is responsible to write the code for joining them together. This becomes a tedious task for developers and pushes the timelines. Angular doesn’t ask to let you do all of this. It simply requires us to create components and then Angular takes care of the rest by binding them together. Thus, development becomes much more agile and efficient in nature.
- DataModels are POJO: POJO stands for Plain Old JavaScript Objects. Angular is designed in such a way that data models in it are POJO, which means they do not require unnecessary getter and setter functions for modification. Properties can be added or altered by direct modification or via looping statements. This way the code also looks cleaner and improves on understandability. All properties of the current object are mapped to the view by Angular; it watches for any changes to these properties and then based on conditions updates the view.
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Support for Custom Directives:
Angular has support for creating our own custom directives. These directives help the developer to create custom HTML tags that aid easy DOM manipulation by separating out the DOM manipulation code from the MVC code. Following are some of the examples which will make us clear the use of directives- As a custom HTML element: <myWebApp></myWebApp>
- As a custom class name: <div class = “FormRender”></div>
- As a custom attribute: <div my-ng-app> </div>
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Filters/Pipes as an In-Built Feature: Angular has several important features, one of them being filters. Filters are used in Angular to format the data in the required format without changing the meaning of the data. Let us suppose, you want to display any date. So, to display a date in a specified format, we can provide the date filter with the appropriate format like DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY, etc. There are a lot of such predefined filters in AngularJS such as currency, date, time, orderby, UpperCase, LowerCase, etc. which are very convenient to use and thus promote the use of Angular for web development.
One important thing to note is that starting with Angular 2.0, filters have been renamed to ‘Pipes’, to provide the developer with additional functionality. Hence, you may also come across some places where ‘Pipes’ is mentioned. Angular also gives us the opportunity to create our own custom pipes which can be used as per our need to filter out the data.
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Increased Productivity and Efficiency:
- As a framework, Angular is modern and robust. There are a lot of IDE’s available which make programming easy to do by detecting errors at an early stage and highlighting them appropriately. Some of the editors also support hints and auto-complete which help in faster development.
- In Angular, the developer is given the flexibility and control to show the view to the end-user as per the requirement. There are lots of templates available and we can also create a custom template of our own and render it to the UI as per need.
- Angular’s CLI (Command Line Interface) lets the developer create components and interfaces faster. It can also be used to install any library locally in the project or globally at a system level. At the end of every step, the CLI modifies all the app.module.ts or the package.json (in the latter case) and saves the developer’s time.
- Cross-Platform Support across various Devices and Environments: Angular provides support for the cross-platform development of web apps. We can write a single piece of code and it will work on all the browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and across devices such as iPad, iPhone, other Android devices, etc. This makes the web application’s acceptability more, and it reaches a wider audience; thereby increasing its popularity.
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Integrated Unit Testing: Testing is an important aspect when it comes to the overall development of an application. There are various stages involved in testing such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing, etc. Of all these steps, unit testing is the first and foremost stage wherein all the modules and components are tested individually, in an isolated way on various parameters such as logic, performance, etc. This is mostly done by developers once the development is at the final stage.
Angular provides us with various inbuilt tools such as Karma, Jasmine, Protractor, etc which contain easy methods such as Stubs and Mocks which are very useful for writing automated test cases. All these test cases form a test-suite, in which each test condition is executed and additionally, its report can be generated in any convenient format such as HTML, XLS, etc. From this report, we can easily find out which component test cases are successful and unsuccessful and then improvise the code logic again. -
Google has the responsibility to maintain and support it:
AngularJS is maintained and supported by Google. Google releases a new version of Angular after every year or two years, they are also responsible for providing maintenance to existing AngularJS versions in the form of security fixes, bug fixes, etc. Besides this, Angular also has a big and growing chunk of community that provides support for developers when required. Various initiatives such as Developer Conferences, competitions, etc. are organized by this community. All of this has greatly impacted the credibility of AngularJS among developers and it is increasing day by day. -
Used by Top Global Companies for their Applications:
Many of today’s top global companies use the AngularJS framework for developing the newest features for their software products. As angular provides the developer with a lot of flexibility while development, developers create applications with the best available user experience. Some of the global companies which have developed all their software products in Angular include the likes of Amazon, Netflix, PayPal, Upwork, etc.
The above features & reasons can largely impact the developer to opt for Angular for web development that really helps to create responsive designs & also enhances the overall user experience.