Top 8 Reasons Why You Should Use Angular

In recent years, the popularity of Angular has increased in the tech world. As an open-source framework with highly advanced JavaScript support, Angular is an attractive solution for developing web applications. Angular is developed, maintained and supported by Google and has a solid code base. It is the outcome of innovative work by Google engineers, Misko Hevery and Adam Abrons. The relationship with Google and seamless support are some of the reasons why Angular is popular among developers (Why_developers_are_choosing_Angular) over other JavaScript frameworks. Looking at its high marketability pace in this era of technological advancement, we have listed some noteworthy reasons why you should choose Angular:

1. Perfect implementation of Model View Controller (MVC) architecture

The angular framework is based on MVC (#1_Based_on_MVC) architecture (a software design pattern used to develop web applications). It makes the code easier to extend and maintain in the future. There are other web development frameworks as well that are built on MVC architecture but Angular is perhaps the most popular among all of them.

How is MVC implemented in other web frameworks?

First, you need to split your app into MVC components (Model, View, and Controller).

Later, you are required to write code to combine these components together again.

Sometimes, other frameworks require developers to write shortcuts between the components that deteriorate the quality of the software. Therefore, implementing an MVC in any other framework is a difficult and time-consuming process for developers.

How is MVC implemented in Angular?

It allows you to split the app into MVC components.

After that, Angular will perform the rest of the work.

Angular handles your application components and serves as a channel that assimilates these components into a single application again. It lets developers create specialized apps in less time than other methods.

2. Declarative UI support

The Angular framework relies on HTML for creating excellent user interfaces for mobile and web applications. HTML is a declarative language that is assisted by technologies, such as scripting language (JavaScript) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It is used to define the structure of the web content.

Let’s take a look at what makes HTML an amazing markup language for Angular applications-

HTML offers some special attributes that determine which controllers (https://www.w3schools.com/angular/angular_controllers.asp) (they control the data of Angular applications) you should use for a particular element. These attributes also decide “what” to load instead of “how” to load. This approach has significantly simplified app development from the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) aspect. It means you don’t need to worry about the program flows, you simply need to characterize your application needs, and Angular will take care of all the dependencies and related conditions.

3. Uses Plain Old JavaScript Objects (POJO) data models

In Angular, data models are plain old JavaScript objects (POJO). POJO is an ordinary Java object (https://www.guru99.com/java-oops-class-objects.html#2), introduced by Sun Microsystems. It is easy to write and understand and also increases the reusability of the program. With POJO, your code will look more intuitive and much cleaner because-

• You don’t need to insert complex functions and methods in your code.
• It uses single declarative references.
• It purely focuses on business logic.
• It has no dependencies on the framework.

Using POJO in Angular will help you to develop an intuitive, light-weight and specialized app.

4. Directives that quickly enhance functionality

Angular directives help you to quickly incorporate extra functionality to HTML. Some basics about Angular Directives:

• By adding new attributes to HTML, you can easily extend its functionalities in Angular. These attributes are called directives.
• Angular contains a set of built-in directives that offers functionality for your applications.
• You can define your own directives in Angular.

Your app only needs to set attributes to elements in order to create enhanced functionality. Angular directives accomplish this by enabling us to create our own HTML elements.

5. Less coding

With Angular, you don’t need to write much code while developing web-based applications. As discussed in point no. 3, Angular uses POJO model which doesn’t require additional features or complex coding. Also, in point 4, we have discussed Angular directives. Let’s discuss how Angular directives contribute to requiring less coding.

How do Angular directives contribute to less coding?

• You can easily initiate an Angular application and application data in just one line of code.
• You can seamlessly bind the values of HTML elements with application data by just adding a few code snippets.
• You can easily bind the value of HTML controls (including text area, select, input) to application data in just a few lines of code.
• Directives are separate from application code; so, another team can take the task of writing the code in parallel. This, in turn, minimizes the integration issues and application development time.

6. Easy to use filters

Filters in Angular are used to format data for display to the user. It is basically used to manipulate the data on the view level (the user interface). Here are the following Angular filters- currency formats a number to a currency. For eg. $52 lowercase converts a text to a lower case number formats a number to a string. orderBy sorts or arranges an array (an ordered collection of items) by an expression. filter selects a subset of items from an array.date formats date to a specified format. uppercase converts a text into upper case letters.json formats an object to a JSON (https://www.json.org/)string. limitTo limits a string/array to a specified number of characters.

Filters are easy to add in Angular. It can be added in the expressions by using the pipe character | Suppose you want to format a text into upper case letters, let’s see how easily you can do this by adding filters:

Name Upper Case: {{student.fullName() | uppercase}}

More about Angular filters

• Filters are standalone functions that make it possible to create a sortable HTML table without even writing JavaScript code.
• Similar to Angular directives, Angular filters are also separated from your app.

7. Edge with modules and simplified testing

With Angular, you can build the application by combining the set of separate modules (https://angular.io/guide/architecture-modules). These modules can be independent of one another or dependent on each other. For example, you can add a Gmail login module (as an independent module) in certain areas of your app. Angular will easily recognize these additional objects in your app and unite them together. This module separation approach in angular lets you load only necessary functions and services, making automated testing easy for the testers.

8. Parallel development and code reusability

Angular allows developers to write and test the code in parallel. This parallel workflow reduces the development and testing time for applications. Another reason why Angular is emerging as an industry leader in the app world is its code reusability feature.

Let’s understand what is so special about the code reusability feature:

In an application, there may be a number of ‘dumb’ (https://angular.io/guide/architecture-components) (Dumb components act as a brick in your application wall, you can take the control over these components and place them anywhere in your application code) that can’t even determine their own internal status. In Angular, you can easily reuse these dumb components by removing unnecessary things and focus only on what you need.

Let’s suppose you have developed an app and on one of the webpages, the designer wants a pop-up alert dialog box before the delete confirmation message. On the other webpage, he wants you to delete three images and add an image to another section. Thanks to the code usability feature of Angular, you don’t need to panic about these changes. You can easily reuse required components or a ‘dumb’ component (that doesn’t determine internal status, hence they won’t affect the other areas of the code) into your code.

Disclaimer - This article was originally published on Zibtek blog - https://www.zibtek.com/blog/top-8-reasons-why-you-should-use-angular/