14 Tips to Use AngularJS Effectively
AngularJS has become one of the favorite front-end frameworks among the web developers.
Why we use AngularJS? Because AngularJS helps in developing creative and feature-rich web applications.
In fact, it is proven that AngularJS is the best front-end technology for web app development.
How? With the help of AngularJS features and benefits
Check out the AngularJS features:
Check out the AngularJS benefits:
So, it has become vital to use AngularJS for developing web applications that are superfast and high-performing such as YouTube, PayPal, Netflix, Forbes, and many more.
But, while creating such web apps, you need to effectively use the features of AngularJS to get the maximum outcome from the same.
So, here we have come up with a few powerful tips for using AngularJS that helps you develop awesome web apps:
1. Initialization
Today, whether it is a web or mobile app, one of its success factors include how fast it loads.
That’s the reason why your goal should be to make sure the web app does not take much time to load at the users’ end.
For this, you should consider placing <script> tags of AngularJS at the bottom of the page. This would allow other HTML elements to load first. This improves the loading speed of the web app which ultimately improves the user experience to a great extent.
As the AngularJS script tags are moved to the bottom of the page, they don’t obstruct those HTML elements anymore. So, the AngularJS script tags are loaded when they are actually required and not in the beginning unnecessarily.
2. Expressions
While using complex JavaScript code, you should consider making it a method in the controller. That means you need to add those JavaScript codes as a method to the $scope.
Once, you do this, call those methods from the view whenever required. This is completely opposite to using Angular expressions to store the complex JavaScript code and calling them right in the View.
3. Controllers
Controllers are used to controlling the data flow within the web application. Controllers, being JavaScript objects, contains functions and attributes.
Dos of AngularJS controllers:
● Use controllers to set up the initial state of $scope object
● Once, this setup is done, one or more behaviour needs to be added
● Only a business logic should go within a controller that you need for a single view
● Utilize the array notation to initiate the controller to protect against minification
Don’ts of AngularJS controllers:
● Don’t use controllers for DOM manipulations
● For formatting input and filtering out the output, skip using AngularJS controllers
● Avoid using controllers to share the code across the various AngularJS controllers
● To create service instances or managing the entire life cycle of other components, you should not use AngularJS controllers
4. Code Modularization
If you are looking to develop a web app such as Netflix, YouTube, and similar ones, you need to consider the increasing size of the code by time.
So, when you start writing the code for a web application, consider the future code requirements in advance and start dividing your app features into modules.
Split your code to create AngularJS modules for bigger web apps and manage them effectively. These modules are flexible enough to be used in any other page or view.
So, don’t limit your app size by including everything in the main module because it creates hassles while upgrading the same.
5. DOM Manipulations
There are chances that you want to use DOM manipulations and thanks to the benefits it offers. But, when you manipulate DOM, AngularJS makes an application state consistent by automatically triggering the events.
When AngularJS does this, it increases the cost of the application that was not required. So, we are not saying to completely avoid using DOM manipulations. But, whenever you want to use it, use it within $scope.$apply(callback) function.
6. Directives
As per the official guide of AngularJS, directives can be created the way you create controllers and services to allow AngularJS to use.
So, when you use AngularJS directives, consider the following best practices:
● While creating directives, prefix your own directive names so that there is no confusions or collisions when there are future built-in directive name upgrades.
● It is always better to use the dash delimited format of directives such as ng-model.
● Also, use ‘data-’ prefixed version such as data-ng-model when you use directives with an HTML validation tool.
● When it comes to using directives, make sure you avoid using it via comment and classes. Rather, use it via tag names and attributes because it becomes easy for you to determine the matching elements.
7. Templates
AngularJS attributes and elements are stored within the templates in AngularJS. AngularJS works on combining the data fetched from the model and controller with the templates. This combination AngularJS makes it render the dynamic view which a user actually experiences in the browser.
So, when there are larger templates in an HTML file, divide them into smaller and individual HTML files and load them using templateURL option.
8. Business Logic in Models
While we were discussing the Dos of controllers, we shared that it is preferred to have business logic in controllers.
So, what you can do is, keep your business logic in the models so that it becomes easy for you to share them across various controllers and services. So, to perform unit testing on models becomes easy for you.
The method or service that is used to update your model will have the code sent by the controllers and you need to create the helper classes which will then execute the business logic.
9. Naming Conventions
One of the most important tip when using AngularJS is to have consistent naming conventions across your entire web application.
This allows you and your fellow developers to easily read, manage, and maintain your code. So, whenever a developer is unavailable, the other can easily understand what is going on in the web app and can work upon the same without missing out on the application logic.
10. Form Validations
AngularJS has amazing features that we discussed above. But, one solid feature is the form validations. As this feature accepts user inputs, it is considered to be the crucial feature within the application.
Generally, the developer needs to put the ‘if, else if’ codes in order to validate the form. But, AngularJS makes it super easy and quick to validate the inputs gathered through the form. So, the developers need to make the most of this AngularJS feature.
11. Defining Components
Most developers make this mistake of combining the codes of model, controller, and factory within a single file.
But, it is recommended to make the separate files for all of them and then start creating codes for them. So, the file names would be- mycode.module.js, mycode.controller.js, mycode.factory.js, etc.
It is important for you to define your components appropriately.
12. Effective use of scopes
With scopes as well, the developers make a mistake of not utilizing it effectively. So, when it comes to writing scopes, they should be written only in controllers and when it comes to reading scopes, they should be only from templates.
Also, make sure you don’t create properties in the scope and only in the object.
13. Dependency Injection
You must know the different types of executing dependency injection in AngularJS. But, the most effective way to do is to pass the dependency to the constructor function.
This makes other objects or functions to create the dependency objects. So, if you know how to do it, you should consider this way of doing dependency injection. And, if you haven’t done anything like this before, you should try this.
14. Unit testing
AngularJS is smarter compared to other frameworks because it also allows you to unit test your models.
So, whether you are a developer who loves to do manual testing or loves to write unit tests for testing your models, you need to check out the tools developed by the AngularJS core team- Protractor and Karma.
Make sure you effectively utilize AngularJS even for unit testing.
Make the Best Use of AngularJS
AngularJS, being the best front-end framework to develop amazing web apps, come up with features and benefits that serve as the boon to the web developers.
It’s just that you need to know certain hacks to use AngularJS to ensure you write less, yet power-packed code. So, it’s not always about knowing how to code using AngularJS. It is more important to code effectively using AngularJS.
So, utilize all of these above-mentioned powerful tips to make the best use of AngularJS for your web application development.
What is your own tip of using AngularJS effectively? Share them with us now.
