AngularJS (commonly referred to as “Angular.js” or “AngularJS 1.X”) is a JavaScript-based open-source front-end web application framework mainly maintained by Google and by a community of individuals and corporations to address many of the challenges encountered in developing single-page applications. The JavaScript components complement Apache Cordova, a framework used for developing cross-platform mobile apps. It aims to simplify both the development and the testing of such applications by providing a framework for client-side model–view–controller (MVC) and model–view–viewmodel (MVVM) architectures, along with components commonly used in rich Internet applications. In 2014, the original AngularJS team began working on Angular (Application Platform).
The AngularJS framework works by first reading the HTML page, which has additional custom tag attributes embedded into it. Angular interprets those attributes as directives to bind input or output parts of the page to a model that is represented by standard JavaScript variables. The values of those JavaScript variables can be manually set within the code, or retrieved from static or dynamic JSON resources.
According to JavaScript analytics service Libscore, AngularJS is used on the websites of Wolfram Alpha, NBC, Walgreens, Intel, Sprint, ABC News, and about 12,000 other sites out of 1 million tested in October 2016. AngularJS is currently in the top 100 of the most starred projects on GitHub.
AngularJS is the frontend part of the MEAN stack, consisting of MongoDB database, Express.js web application server framework, Angular.js itself, and Node.js server runtime environment.
AngularJS is a structural framework for dynamic web applications. It lets you use HTML as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application components clearly and succinctly. Its data binding and dependency injection eliminate much of the code you currently have to write. And, it all happens within the browser, making it an ideal partner with any server technology.
AngularJS Framework
AngularJS is a structural framework for dynamic web apps. It lets you use HTML as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. AngularJS’s data binding and dependency injection eliminate much of the code you would otherwise have to write. And it all happens within the browser, making it an ideal partner with any server technology.
AngularJS is what HTML would have been, had it been designed for applications. HTML is a great declarative language for static documents. It does not contain much in the way of creating applications, and as a result building web applications is an exercise in what do I have to do to trick the browser into doing what I want?
The impedance mismatch between dynamic applications and static documents is often solved with:
- a library – a collection of functions which are useful when writing web apps. Your code is in charge and it calls into the library when it sees fit. E.g., jQuery.
- frameworks – a particular implementation of a web application, where your code fills in the details. The framework is in charge and it calls into your code when it needs something app specific. E.g., durandal, ember, etc.
AngularJS takes another approach. It attempts to minimize the impedance mismatch between document centric HTML and what an application needs by creating new HTML constructs. AngularJS teaches the browser new syntax through a construct we call directives. Examples include:
- Data binding, as in {{}}.
- DOM control structures for repeating, showing and hiding DOM fragments.
- Support for forms and form validation.
- Attaching new behavior to DOM elements, such as DOM event handling.
- Grouping of HTML into reusable components.
Angular 7
Angular is one of the most popular frameworks for web application development. With the release of Angular 7, it has given even more features to web developers like including the core framework, Angular Material, CLI with synchronized major versions, along with toolchain, and has enabled several major partner launches.
Angular architecture is based on components, templates, directives, and services. It provides a built-in dependency injection mechanism for your services, as well as two-way data binding to connect your views with your component code.
