My First Impression of Learning ANGULARJS

Before we delve into the ocean of understanding and learning curves of AngularJS, let me share
my insights and experience of working on web development. Later, I will tell you why experiences
are worth sharing.

For the past four-and-a-half years, I have been working in an IT industry. Started my career as a
Drupal developer, working on web building, site building, extending features, development as well
as designing. During this journey, I came across many technologies which I was expected to learn
from scratch to bind/ integrate one to another.

Cutting a long story to short! So why did I started learning AngularJS? What is the scope of
AngularJS? And why I am sharing my experiences with you guys?

Nowadays, applications are mostly developed in haste, intended to build once and run across
multiple environments with or without little changes. These days we focus more on re-usability
instead of rewriting the code base afresh.

Recently, I had an opportunity to build a website using REST Services, which provides result in
JSON or XML format. It also displays the same data using front-end framework/Decoupled
website. In Drupal, it’s called as Headless Drupal, where front-end & backend will have different
technology (because the client was not happy with the existing design pattern of Drupal & wants to
execute those pages as a mobile app for different Operating System).

After brainstorming, our team decided to go ahead with AngularJS to get the things done. Initially, I
didn’t know whether it was a time-saving framework or not as it follows MVC architect. Considering
the various advantages of AngularJS, the framework is good for building hybrid app using HTML,
CSS, and JavaScript.

The main advantage of building over the native app as it is sleek, maintainable & simple. When we
started learning this framework, at that time every syntax/term was new for me. Sometimes it was
like a nightmare to understand the usage. Initially, I was a bit worried whether developing the app
on AngularJS is worth or not, but stick to the decision and moved ahead with same ideas. This is
the reason why I wanted to share my experience with you noobs.
Let’s have a brief look on the history of AngularJS as it help in learning, who developed AngularJS
and why it was extended. Check out some of the reasons why you should give AngularJS a shot.
To mention a few:

• AngularJS is an open source framework powered by Google. The framework is supported

by a community of highly skilled professionals and is a solution for various web
applications.

• It follows MVC architect that help developers to write clean code and separate front-end
with logic. Model refers to data, the view refers to front-end and controller is the logic that
binds the model with a view. MVC splits app into a different component and later on,
Angular manages that component and merge them for your request.

• Good to build SPA. SPA does not refresh the page again repeatedly for each request,
instead loads the chunks of the page to act faster because it loads entire page only once.
More into Front-end and reduce page refresh act as a local application.

• AngularJS is not a DOM like jQuery, but uses a subset of jquery (Jqlite).

• Basic Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript required. Jquery will be a plus point.

• Gives power to your front-end with time saver.

• Mobile app development using AngularJS. Hybrid apps like Ionic, PhoneGap used to build a
hybrid app. so that user can use those page as App.

Moving forward, we will discuss various AngularJS components, namely

• Data Binding
• Modules and Controllers
• Scope
• Filters
• Services
• Dependency Injection
• Functions
• Directive
• Routing
Let’s start from the beginning. Download AngularJS library from https://angularjs.org/. Now install
and enable AngularJS for the web page.

Now place it with your associated web page and attach. As we attach JS script in HTML page.

<!-- <script src="angular.min.js"></script> --->

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.26/angular.min.js"></script>

AngularJS is attached to your page. Now perform an operation using frontend Framework.

Start with a small piece of code. Do not worry, if few terms will be absolutely new.
Below, I have included script tag to include AngularJS minified version 1.2 with 2 function New1() &
New2() and terms like ng-app, ng-controller. As an output, this will return the text.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.26/angular.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body ng-app>
<div ng-controller="New1">
{{message}}
</div>
<div ng-controller="New2">
{{message}}
</div>
<script language="javascript">
function New1($scope) {
$scope.message = "New message1!";
}
function New2($scope) {
$scope.message = "New message2!";
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
So far we have discussed the basic codebase of AngularJS. How to set up AngularJS with sample
code execution. Over the next couple of posts, I will elaborate each of the components of
AngularJS with sample codebase. Till then just relax and focus on the basic.

When you complete the tutorial, I believe you will have a better understanding of complex
terminologies and techniques. Later, I will also use new terms name like the model, view, controller,
data etc. Guys! Have patience and don’t get confused.