What is Angular?

Angular may be defined as the framework and platform for developing various dynamic single-page applications using HTML and TypeScript.

  • Angular is written in TypeScript and it implements core and optional functionality as a set of TypeScript libraries that can be imported into our applications.
  • Angular components are the basic building blocks of the Angular framework and they are organized into NgModules.
  • NgModules are responsible for collecting related code into functional sets. Any specific Angular app is defined by a set of NgModules.
  • The angular application consists of, at least a root module that enables bootstrapping. It also has many more feature modules.

Benefits of Working with Angular

The angular framework is most suitable for building lightweight applications smartly. This framework is based on TypeScript and it enables users to create interactive Single-Page Applications which are clean, maintainable, and easily testable.

1. Usage of Typescript

TypeScript is actually a superset of JavaScript. It means that users can do more with the code, like, using enums and interfaces. Since Angular is built with TypeScript, it is a strongly typed language which means that it helps developers to keep their code understandable. It is easier to spot bugs and fix them. Thus, it facilitates debugging and hence helps in maintaining a large codebase, which plays a vital role in large enterprise-scale projects.

2. Automatic Synchronization with Two-Way Data Binding

The Angular framework offers two-way data binding whereas other frameworks only provide one-way data binding. It helps in synchronizing the data between Model and View. So, whenever that data is changed or modified, these two components are automatically updated. Therefore, in real-time it helps developers to put only minimum effort into manual modifications.

Angular makes this process of two-way data binding, an integral function of its architecture. As a result, there’s only a little need for sequential callbacks to handle developer interventions or modified data.

3. Consistency

This framework is a fully-fledged responsive web design framework. One of its key features is that there is one recommended way of creating a component, service, or module.

It has the effect of creating great consistency throughout the codebase which is an important goal to strive for as it avoids the situation of other developers wondering how something was built.

To further improve consistency, the Angular team has developed a CLI tool that can be used to create certain repeatable blocks of code from the command line. Also, the frameworks' documentation serves as an up-to-date reference for developers.

4. Productivity

With greater consistency, there is always scope for improvement in productivity. Angular makes the life of developers easy by following the general guidelines and code structure so that developers do not have to spend much of their time trying to figure out what a function, utility, or component does.

The high readability of Angular code also makes it possible for new developers to understand an ongoing project.

The type system helps the developers to catch potential bugs. As it is integrated into IDEs such as VS Code and WebStorm, TypeScript incrementally recompiles and highlights errors as you type.

5. Maintainability

Angular provides the amazing maintainability of code in multiple ways. Moving up from one major version to another, every Angular-related package is updated simultaneously. Therefore, HTTP, Routing, and Angular Material are also included.

Updating is not too complex and can be easily achieved by using only one command, ‘ng update’. It means that users do not have to spend time worrying if the new packages are supported. They need not puzzle over which version should be used or wonder when a particular open-source package will be updated to the latest version.

Also, the various components can be easily decoupled and replaced with improved implementations.

6. Modular Structure

The modular structure of Angular facilitates the developers to effectively divide code into multiple modules. It allows easy organization of app functionality and the creation of reusable chunks of code that can vastly reduce development time and cost. Angular's rich community also supports this with a variety of ready-made components.

Modules also enable to efficiently divide the development work across different teams while ensuring that code stays clean, and organized, as well as allowing the application to be scaled properly.

7. Angular Material

Angular Material is referred to as a collection of ready-to-use, well-tested UI components, and modules that follow Google’s Material-Design principles. It consists of a range of UI components, such as navigation patterns, form controls, buttons, and indicators. Components are developed to adapt to various browsers, well-documented, and written based on the latest guidelines.

These modules are developed by the Angular community and they simplify the design workflow for teams, allowing developers to add new elements and develop applications swiftly with minimal impact on performance.

Summary

  • In this article, we learned about the powerful and extensive Angular framework, which is responsible for most of the popular web applications in today's world.
  • We explored the myriad of benefits of working with Angular. It provides Consistency, Productivity, Maintainability, and other advantages to our application.