6 benefits of using Angular to build a web application.
Read our 6 chosen benefits of why using Angular is a great choice of frameworks to build a web application.
What is Angular?
Angular is a web application framework originally released in 2016 as a rewrite of the also popular AngularJS. Angular is released under the MIT License which means it's free and open source for both individuals and businesses.
Angular is created by the Angular Team at Google and is currently on version 14, the most recent updates being able to create standalone components (as opposed to a Single Page Application (SPA)), improved access to the page title, typed forms and as well as many other improvements and fixes.
Below we've created a list of our top 6 benefits of using Angular to build web applications.
#1 TypeScript
The first benefit is that Angular is that it's TypeScript based. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript; it has a compiler (that's also written in TypeScript) to compile down into JavaScript so it runs on any browser.
TypeScript adds features such as types, interfaces and Enums, as well as a heap of other changes. Programming languages like C# already have most of these features included, but JavaScript doesn't as it wasn't ever intended to be used in this way.
Adding features such as types and interfaces means it's easier to find problems and debug, as you know the type of variable you are expecting. Not only that but it means software such as Visual Studio Code can provide better autocomplete suggestions and code navigation.
#2 Productivity
Angular easily increases productivity by providing you an easy-to-follow structure in the form of components. It provides shortcuts to regular JavaScript functionality that would otherwise mean you'd have to go around the houses to accomplish.
One example of this is two-way binding for variables. If you added created text box for a persons name and wanted to show the contents of the text box on the page, you'd have to:
- add the content to the page
- hook up an event listener to listen for any changes to the text box
- create a method to redraw the section (or whole page)
With Angular, you can simply set the text box model and add text onto the page using the handlebars "Hello {{model.name}}!" – then Angular will take care of the rest, dynamically updating your component as the user types.
#3 Modular
Angular is component based, meaning you can re-use components over and over again in other components or even in another project. We have a component repository that we use throughout Clockwork CRM to make building new features quick and easy.
You can also group components into a module which allows an application to lazy-load certain components, reducing the initial load time of the application.
#4 Community
The community behind Angular is very large which makes getting help easy from search engines and developer sites such as StackOverflow. Chances are that if you've thought about trying to do something, so has someone else, and they've probably hit the same hurdles you have.
There are lots of community built angular packages ready to install via NPM. You can find these packages on various websites, the main one being npmjs.com. You can find modules for Bootstrap, Google Maps, JWT tokens (for authentication), charting, dashboarding, drag and drop, the list goes on.
#5 Angular Material
Material is a set of guidelines that encourage best practice for user interface design. It's included in this list because there is a fantastic component library that you can install into your Angular application. It's created by Google based on the Material set of components, it means creating an application in Angular is even easier.
Angular Material contains components such as buttons, slide toggles, cards, tables, sheets, date pickers, chips, dialogs and so on. These all interact with Angular, gaining the benefits of the components and two-way bindings.
#6 Cross Platform
We've previously mentioned that Angular is based on TypeScript which compiles to JavaScript, well it also means it can be deployed pretty much anywhere and anyhow. It could be through .NET and the required HTML through a .cshtml file, it could be Node.js, PHP, IIS or Apache – basically anything goes.
You can also create mobile applications with Angular too using frameworks such as NativeScript, although that's for a future post.
We hope you enjoyed reading our 6 benefits of building a web application in Angular. We love using Angular, so if you have any extra benefits to add, drop us a message and let us know.