If you’re a seasoned web developer, you would have probably heard of AngularJS, an advanced JavaScript framework built to enhance HTML for web applications. Developed by extremely talented Google engineers Adam Abrons and Miško Heverym in 2009, AngularJS has gained tremendous popularity due to outstanding features it ships with.

This blog post is written to give you a clear picture of benefits that you can take by using AngularJS in your projects. Firstly, I’ll tell you what actually AngularJS is, and then give you some solid reasons that will definitely compel you to think “why it’s crucial to adopt AngularJS today”.

Let’s begin!

What is AngularJS?

AngularJS, often referred to as Angular, is an open-source JavaScript framework, designed to simplify both front-end development and testing tasks for web developers. Written in pure JavaScript, Angular is most suitable for developing single-page web applications that only require client-side programming languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It’s a fully extensible, next generation MVC (Model–view–controller) framework that doesn’t only run without all possible library dependencies, but also works perfectly with other libraries.

AngularJS – the self-proclaimed “superheroic JavaScript MVW (Model-View-Whatever) framework” – allows you to use HTML as template language and enables you extend HTML vocabulary, so you could express each and every component of your application in a clear and concise manner. By helping developers write and test JavaScript code better, Angular makes the browser flawlessly work with any server technology. In a nutshell, this fabulous framework is built to bring MVC capability to modern web applications.

Why to Choose AngularJS for Your Next Web App?

Below are some good reasons to choose AngularJS to be an expert in web app development:

Directive Defines Behavior:

AngularJS directives allow developers to invent new application-specific HTML elements that are completely reusable. They are used to perform all manipulations in DOM attributes, hide complex DOM structure and define the behavior of specific presentation components. Directives come in four flavors:

v HTML element (<angular></angular>)

v Custom attribute (<div data-angular></div>)

v CSS class (<div class=”angular”></div>)

v Comment (<!–directive:angular–>)

Directives play a vital role in incorporating Angular’s functionality into a page. With directives, you can extend your HTML to the great extent by creating custom and reusable HTML components. Prefaced with ng-, a directive is placed in HTML attributes and works as a standalone element separated from your MVC app. Some of the notable and most used built-in Angular directives are ng-app, ng-bind, ng-model, ng-repeat, ng-controller and ng-class.

Handles Dependencies Excellently:

AngularJS features a pre-built injector subsystem that is responsible for creating elements, dealing with their dependencies and delivering them to other elements as required. By taking advantage of dependency injection (DI), Angular carries traditional services from server-side to web apps on the client-side. As a result, much of the load on the server side is decreased, which makes your web application much lighter and faster.

AngularJS can easily handle dependencies since it allows you to divide your web app into logical modules that are dependent on each other and can be initialized separately. Means, you need to work with only the module that you’re interested in. In this way, Angular makes everything from application development to testing a breeze for developers. As DI is pervasive throughout Angular, you can also add a particular dependency as a parameter to AngularJS service function.

Expresses UI Declaratively:

AngularJS makes use of HTML, which is a declarative language, to define user interface of an application. Where defining interface in JavaScript is much more convoluted, on the other side, HTML produces a structured UI that is more intuitive and can be easily manipulated. Strictly speaking, AngularJS is invented to let you focus on what’s being presented, instead of how it’s presented.

AngularJS takes a declarative approach to make app development and testing easier by adapting and extending traditional HTML. It allows you to declare your app’s user interface and put markup directly into HTML, so the imperative logic can be kept separate from the presentation logic. Rather than spending time on the flow of the program, Angular lets you declare what you really want, and takes care of how components should get hold of their dependencies.

Keeps Code Short:

Two-way data binding in AngularJS reduces server refresh cycles by binding the view to the model permanently. By establishing an automated synchronization of data between the view and model components, it saves you the trouble of writing a huge amount of useless code. Generally, in a typical web app, nearly 80 percent of code is reserved for various DOM-related responsibilities. Angular’s two-way data binding technique makes this unnecessary code disappear, forcing you to focus only on important aspects of your web application.

As the classical template system binds data in a single direction, developers are required to manually perform DOM manipulation which is a very arduous and complicated process. In contrast, AngularJS saves developers from manually placing data into the view by giving them advantage of automatic data synchronization. Consequently, developers have to write less code which in itself is a great deal.

Filters Provide Flexibility:

Just like directives, which are separate from the app, Filters are standalone functions that concern with transformation of data. They filter the data before it reaches the view and are in charge of activities like implementing pagination, formatting a number with decimal points, reversing a text string, and filtering an array based on conditions etc.

Filters can be used in services, controllers, and directives. As well, you can apply them to expressions in view templates. Not only Filters make clear what the intention of UI is but how the data is being shaped. Believe it or not, Filters are so flexible and resourceful that you can use them to create a sortable HTML table without writing a single line of JavaScript code.

Built to be Testable:

AngularJS is built from ground up with the intention of improving testability and performance of front end codebase. JavaScript is a dynamically typed programming language that goes through a set of several different tests and takes almost no help from the compiler. Keeping this fact in mind, the AngularJS team has packed AngularJS with numerous incredible testing capabilities, so that testing could be made as painless as possible.

By taking advantage of dependency injection and two-way data binding, Angular makes your code easy to reuse, effortless to maintain, simple to test and free from boilerplate. For end-to-end testing, Angular uses a built-in end to end test runner, called “Protractor”. Also, it’s completely ready for Unit testing to let you test individual units of your code. Moreover, AngularJS developers have built a Google Chrome extension, known as “”, to help developers identify performance bottlenecks and let them debug their applications inside the browser.

Conclusion:

Now you would have understood why AngularJS is so robust and powerful. There are plenty of open-source JavaScript frameworks available on the web, but no framework provides as much incredible features as Angular. By simplifying both development and testing, Angular doesn’t only help developers build a well-architectured, performance driven and effortlessly maintainable rich web app, but also delivers a rich experience to end users.

Author Bio:

Ajeet is an experienced WordPress developer who is working with WordPressIntegration – Developing WP themes from PSD. In his spare time, he writes about different topics related to HTML5, Responsive, WordPress, eCommerce, and JavaScript to share his work experience with others. For weekly updates, follow @Wordpress_INT.

This content was originally published here.