Angular
Angular, originally known as AngularJS, is a platform and framework for building single-page client applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Here are some key points about Angular:
History
- AngularJS was first released in 2010 by Google. It was designed to simplify both the development and testing of applications by providing a framework for client-side Model-View-Whatever (MVW) architecture.
- In 2016, Google released Angular 2, which was a complete rewrite of AngularJS, abandoning much of its predecessor's architecture to improve performance, maintainability, and the overall developer experience. This version also introduced TypeScript as the primary language for app development.
- Subsequent versions like Angular 4, Angular 6, Angular 8, and so on, have been released with incremental improvements, new features, and optimizations.
Features
- Components: Angular uses components as the fundamental building blocks of Angular applications. Components encapsulate the template, logic, and data for a part of the UI.
- Dependency Injection: A design pattern implemented in Angular to achieve Inversion of Control (IoC) between classes and their dependencies.
- Directives: Angular provides directives to extend HTML with new attributes or elements, altering the DOM structure.
- Services: These are singleton objects which get instantiated only once during the lifetime of an application and can be shared across components.
- Modules: Angular applications are modular, allowing developers to group related components, directives, pipes, and services into cohesive blocks of functionality.
- Change Detection: Angular has a robust change detection mechanism that efficiently detects when data-bound properties change, updating the view accordingly.
- Routing: Angular provides a routing system to navigate between different views or components within the application without reloading the page.
Development Tools
- Angular CLI: A command-line interface tool that helps in initializing, developing, scaffolding, and maintaining Angular applications.
- Angular Material: A UI component library for Angular developers that provides ready-to-use UI components following Google's Material Design.
Community and Ecosystem
- Angular has a vast ecosystem with numerous third-party libraries and tools to enhance development.
- It enjoys strong support from Google and a large, active community contributing to its documentation, tutorials, and open-source projects.
External Links
Related Topics