What is Angular? What Does It Do?
Angular is an open-source Javascript-based MVC library provided by Google and developers worldwide. In a nutshell, it is a structural framework for dynamic web applications. This allows you to use HTML as a template language and extend HTML tags to represent your application’s components explicitly. You don’t need a library like jQuery.
Its primary purpose is to provide the possibility to develop dynamically on a single site. The most significant difference from libraries with a similar structure is that they are bidirectional. That is, changing the data changes the view, and changing the view changes the data.
What Does Angular Do?
The main changes in the Angular library have been made since version 2.0. First, the architecture of the framework has completely changed. This difference was almost identical to the difference between Java and Javascript. This change was also reflected in the name. Versions before 2.0 were called AngularJS, while versions 2+ were just the Angular use case. It was redesigned with a completely different structure based on Microsoft’s TypeScript. Also, care was taken not to compare it with component-based systems such as Reach.
Angular 2.0 and Angular 4.0 are very close versions. With version 3.0 and later versions of some modules from version 2.0, the Angular library was updated directly to version 4.0. There is no other specific reason to skip this release. As version 4.0 and later versions will continue with the same architecture, this enhancement will not significantly impact developers. Typescript is a feature-based, adapted, and extended version of Javascript. All Javascript code is executed in Typescript. However, Typescript doesn’t run in the browser because its structure is not directly similar to Javascript. Sometimes you need a compiler.
Why Should I Use Angular?
1 – Angular’s SPA support
Thanks to the use of Angular, single page application (SPA) is a website design approach where JavaScript dynamically generates the content of a new page by modifying the DOM element of the revised page of the current page instead of loading a new HTML page. When a new page is linked to (redirected) from the index.html page of a web application not developed with the SPA approach, this page is rendered as HTML by the server and displayed in the browser.
This main problem causes white screens and delays in standard web applications. This is because it directly affects the end user. The SPA application dynamically retrieves content from the server using AJAX requests or WebSockets. This allows the browser to keep the current page open while requesting additional content or a new page fetched to the server in the background. This way, dialogs, and updates are much faster because only the relevant parts are updated.
You may think the URL has not changed if the page is not refreshed. To avoid this, you can use the HTML5 History API to change the URL of a page without reloading the page so that you can create a separate URL for each view.
2 – Two-way data binding
In Angular two and later, use the ngModel directive to automatically provide a data link between the view and controller layers. Thus, thanks to Angular bidirectional data binding, changes to the same variable will trigger changes to related fields throughout the page. If you wanted to do this with jquery, you could use selectors to change individual areas, set values, and call the necessary methods. But with Angular, it’s straightforward and very convenient.
3 – Modular Architecture
Thanks to Angular’s modular structure and angular applications, you can break your application into parts and make them reusable. You can group these modules with components, directives, pipes, and services. Another advantage of the module is its loaded structure. This allows you to group and load one or more functions as needed, dramatically improving your application’s performance when used correctly.
Enterprise applications can be extensive. It becomes challenging to divide work between teams. Modules allow you to distribute work modules across groups on a module-by-module basis. Maintaining code consistency paves the way for writing organized code.
4 – More Work with Less Coding
Developers want to write short and efficient code. Angular also supports MVC (Model View Controller) architecture and allows developers to write code according to this structure. Components and modules will enable you to reuse instead of writing code repeating the same task repeatedly. You can also use Angular directives to develop HTML code and create your custom HTML tags. With directives like “ngIf” and “ngFor,” you can easily manage HTML rendering using shortcodes. The examples make extensive use of these functionalities.
5 – Easy Integration
Angular-compatible code is generated from powerful front-end design frameworks such as Ionic, Telerik, Kendo UI, and Wijmo. Therefore, developing a project using such a third-party framework is very easy.
Which Language Does Angular Use?
Programming languages can be divided into two main frameworks: low Level and High-Level programming languages. Assembly is an example of a low-level programming language. Languages of this class are difficult to interpret, maintain and debug. Also, it cannot remember physical memory addresses. Above all, you cannot move it between machines with different instruction sets.
High-level programming languages are usually grouped under two main headings;
- Imperative
- Declarative
Declarative languages describe computers in terms of how they perform specific tasks and can be grouped under two headings.
Logic (rule-based, logical, rule-based): Rules are not defined in a specific order like imperative languages. The language system determines its sequence of operations to provide the required output. An example is a preamble.
Functional type: A programming language that produces program output by computing mathematical functions instead of expressions (instructions). Examples are Lisp and Haskell.
Imperative languages describe how computers perform specific tasks, and imperative languages can be divided into three main categories.
Procedural-oriented (procedural, process-based): This is the opposite of the object-oriented approach of encapsulating a program flow with objects. Example of the programming language C.
Scripting languages: Languages that run in a specialized runtime environment are called scripting languages. Each step is performed with user interaction. Examples include JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python, TypeScript, AppleScript, and CoffeeScript.
Is Angular Hard to Learn?
Like many Java examples, Angular is an open-source JavaScript-based WMD framework provided by Google, used by millions of developers worldwide. AngularJS has a straightforward and comfortable structure for beginners. Angular has a perfect documentation structure, and the extensive third-party module options make AngularJS more user-friendly for developers, while Angular is also easy to learn.
Learn basic Angular concepts such as routes, filters, services, and factors to help you build richer web application interfaces. Angular provides functional, highly efficient AngularJS features such as data binding, field management, form validation, routing, and i18n.
What can be done with Angular?
With Angular and angular features, it is possible to do a lot with very little code. The structure is easy to learn. The development process is straightforward. It is enough to bind bidirectional data to HTML elements. It is also possible to create themes and use them many times.
The ability to validate on the client side before submitting a form is required to use code backend in HTML pages. You can perform operations such as showing/hiding DOM elements. It facilitates the creation of constructs such as unit tests, end-to-end tests, component authoring, and client-side dependency injection. This facilitates client-side implementation of the MVC framework.