Videos

Intermediate

Live Training

What is Angular?

Manav Pandya

Print 8 min read

22 Jul 2022

Beginner

9.46K Views

Angular is a client-side JavaScript-based framework that follows the MVC (Model View Controller) architectural pattern which is originally founded and maintained by Google but now it’s open-source so anyone can contribute to it. It comes with the approach of SPA (Single Page Application) where we can develop and test the various applications that stick to the single framework.

What is Angular?

The word Angular is a buzzword in the market, and most of the people in the tech world are talking about the framework Angular that What is Angular, why we need this, how it works, what are the advantages and disadvantages over another frameworks and most importantly that how can we learn it as soon as possible. In this guide, most probably we will discuss the introduction of Angular, its version history, and so on, so let’s start with the introductory part.

Introduction to Angular

Angular is a client-side JavaScript-based framework that follows the MVC (Model View Controller) architectural pattern which is originally founded and maintained by Google but now it’s open-source so anyone can contribute to it. It comes with the approach of SPA (Single Page Application) where we can develop and test the various applications that stick to the single framework. One of the primary focuses of Angular is that we can create a different platform-based application for different usage.

Web application
Desktop based application
Mobile-based application

In short, we can say Angular is “One framework, multiple platforms” Users of Angular are increasing day by day just because it provides a rich development experience for the interactive client-side application compared to other traditional web-based frameworks. The next question that may arise is, do we just need to use Angular to get started? The answer is a big NO.

Angular is written on TypeScript which is a superset of JavaScript, it means that it includes various new and useful features along with the JavaScript but at the end of compilation, all the JavaScript-based code will always be converted into the native JavaScript code itself. TypeScript is yet another open-source language developed and maintained by Microsoft which provides the various features along with the Angular like OOPS concept, type safety, error handling, and if anyone wants to start with TypeScript and Angular then the official docs is written in TypeScript so that newbies can dig into it very easily.

The version history of Angular

As we have discussed earlier in this guide that Angular is evolving and teams are working hard to introduce new and crunchy features to improve performance and stability for the user. Below is the complete Angular versions history in a tabular format.

Version

Release date

Angular 2

Sep 2016

Angular 4

Mar 2017

Angular 5

Nov 2017

Angular 6

May 2018

Angular 7

Oct 2018

Angular 8

May 2019

Angular 9

Feb 2020

These are the Angular versions released so far but make a note of it that it does not include the versions of AngularJs 1.x. After evolving the Angular version by version, it’s been tough to maintain the architect or code structure, and for the solution, we have the magic behind it called “Angular CLI”. Angular CLI is a command-line interface that comes with the various collection of quick commands which can speed up the development process and reduce the efforts of creating everything on our own, in other words, we can say the CLI solves the problem of creating the components, views and another important part of the Angular by just using the single line of command, and by which we can create tons of files for the different usage which are listed below.

Component
Directive
Module
Routing
Class
Pipe
Services
Enum

So these are the few features that we can get using the command ng generate, thus we have tons of the commands and a few of them are listed below.

ng generate
ng new
ng build
ng serve
ng test
ng update
ng deploy
ng doc

And many more commands are available to faster the development time and gain work productivity If you have noticed that Angular CLI commands come by creating the application, updating an existing package, running the application, testing the workflow, adding additional linting support, and deploying the final production for the production usage, so this is the power of the Angular CLI which allow us to quick start the development without any hustle.

Configuration to get started with the Angular

If we want to get started with Angular for the upcoming projects, there are some pre-requisites that we need to follow are described below.

Need to have nodejs latest or stable version

To get started with Angular, we must have Nodejs to be installed into our machine, and we can get the latest one from here. We can choose one from the different supported operating systems and can continue with the setup process.

Installing the Angular CLI

After installing the nodejs, now we have NPM (Node Package Manager) which allows us to grab the useful packages from the global registry. To use the CLI command, we need to install CLI using the below command.

npm install –g @angular/cli

Creating the Angular app

When we did with the installation of CLI, now it’s time to create the new Angular app, for that we can use the below command.

 ng new <app_name>

Executing the Angular app

So far, we have created an angular app using the CLI command, now after creating the app, let's execute it and see what it looks like. For that, we can go to the project directory and use the below command.

ng serve –open

The additional option –open will open a blank window of a browser along with the default port number. This is how we can install the required software and start our Angular app development journey.

Summary

The global business expects various features such as robust enterprise web app with cutting-edge codes, observing the required guidelines and these enterprise-level Angular applications must be built in such a way that they are highly optimized for cater service to the globe, should be followed by business-driven approach, and user-centric goals, which in turn aids to enhance the overall business growth.

So far in this guide, we have learned what is angular, its different version history, and angular CLI and at last, we have gone through the few steps that we need to follow to get started with Angular. I hope this guide puts an impact on your learning experience and you may be thriving to dig into it as soon as possible, Dot Net Tricks Angular 2 to 10 web API live interactive training aligned with real-time which is delivered by Google GDE and Microsoft MVP globally. The angular online training program helps you learn to build projects using web API ASP.NET MVC5 and node.js. Thanks for reading.