Angular is the third most used framework right after ReactJS in the 2019 Stack Overflow survey It is well equipped front end tool that can help developers write, read, maintain and is easy to code. But it is still not easy for many businesses to take a call whether Angular is suitable for a particular project or not. Specially, now that ReactJS is giving a fierce competition to the veteran Angular framework. We have in fact, done a comparative analysis between ReactJS and Angular.

While choosing a technology stack for your product, it’s essential to pick the tool that will help increase the development speed and reduce your cost. In the article, we will discuss how Angular is useful in different project scenarios

Overview

Angular is a web development tool which lets the developers build robust tools by creating client-side web applications in TypeScript. Angular was initially meant to develop Single Page Applications (SPA) as during those days (around 2010) it was a huge craze to build SPAs. And this lead to its popularity as well. But over a while other frameworks like ReactJS and VueJS have overtaken it as they offer more functionality. This has lead to the Angular Development team to come up with enhanced versions of Angular. This continuous approach to upgrade the language has let Angular become a much-loved framework by the global developer community.

Why Choose Angular?

Here are some strong points in favor of Angular for using it in a particular project.

1. Strong documentation: Angular has very developer-friendly documentation. They can easily find all the necessary details without requiring a discussion with their colleagues. As a result, the developer can quickly come up with a fix for an issue and resolve technical problems in no time.
2. Google’s patronage: Google’s support to Angular is one of the biggest motivation for developers to invest in learning the framework. At ng-conf 2017, Google announced its commitment to support Angular for years to come.
3. Collaborative ecosystem: The rise of Angular has led to an ecosystem which supported the development of third-party tools and components that can be integrated into Angular applications. It has resulted in much exciting functionality and improved achievements
4. Shift from MVC to Component Architecture: Angular’s shift from an MVC to Component specific architecture has enabled the app to be split into independent logical and functional components. These individual components can easily be reused in other parts of the application. This also allows for independent testing of web apps to check for their smooth performance.
5. AOT Compiler: The Angular compiler can convert TypeScript and HTML into JavaScript during the build process. The allows the code to be compiled before the browser loads your web application and results in much quicker rendering. Hence the name Ahead of Time (AOT). It is also much secure than the Just in Time (JIT) compiler.
6. CLI: It is probably the most popular feature with the majority of developers. It makes the whole app development process automated with app initialization, configuration, and development as quickly as possible. With the CLI you can create a new project, and with the help of few simple commands, you can add features, run unit and tests. It boosts the overall development process and increases the quality of the code.
7. Elements: Right from the inception of Angular 6, the developers have the flexibility of adding custom elements to any of the web applications built with React, JQuery, Vue or any other architecture.
8. Ivy Renderer: Just like Angular Elements, the Ivy Renderer became available right after Angular 7. The renderer’s job is to convert the application’s components and templates into JavaScript code that can be shown at the browser end. The key features of this tool is its famous ‘tree shaking technique’. When the rendering is going on Ivy removes all the unrequired code to make it slimmer and smaller. As a result the application loads faster.
9. Material: The set of material design elements are optimized for the Angular ecosystem and it lets developers to add UI components to it.
10. Dependency Injection: Arguably the most powerful feature of the Angular. The crucial function is to give information about the dependencies of another objects. These dependencies can tell how different components are connected and translate changes in one part of the affected code to other parts. Moreover, the dependency injection makes the code more robust and easy to maintain. It can make the testing process swift and save cost in web development. From the onset of Angular 2, developers have the option of dependency injectors that can be utilized without reconfiguring all components. On the flip side of it the dependency injection can be a time intensive process and it may be hard to generate dependencies for components.
11. Universal: It is used for server-side rendering, The Angular Universal can introduce many benefits to a project. Firstly, it allows the web crawlers to improve the web application’s rank in the search engines. Secondly, it reduces the page load time and boosts performance on mobile platforms. These increases the traffic on your site.

Projects where Angular is the best bet

1. Enterprise Applications

The Angular community is proud to mention that they can develop any large scale projects with the help of its all-in-one TypeScript features. TypeScript is in-built with autocompletion, advanced refactoring, and navigation features. The Typescript architecture also allows you to reuse and easily maintain the code.

2. Dynamic Content Apps aka Single Page Applications aka SPA:

The most prominent use of Angular is to create single page web applications as it offers a broad variety of tools for SPA development. Above all, it the best technology for sites where the content changes dynamically based on visitor behavior and choices. Dependency injection allows a seamless transition of changes from one component in the architecture to another component automatically.

3. Progressive web apps:

The Angular community has been working on progressive web apps since 2015 and they foresee a great future ahead for such apps. The Angular 5 comes with integrated Progressive web app support. The new CLI commands of Angular 6 can be used by the developers to turn their existing web apps into progressive web apps.

Conclusion

These days the web applications are becoming highly sophisticated and experience rich for the users owing to highly evolved frameworks like Angular. To get the most from your applications, you should analyze the needs of your business and customers. In this article, we have discussed the major reasons for choosing Angular and the type of projects where it can be used for maximum leverage.