10 best practices for creating Angular Application

In this article we will cover 10 best practices for creating Angular Application.

1. Follow the Angular style guide: The Angular style guide provides a set of conventions and best practices for writing Angular code. It covers topics such as naming conventions, code structure, and component design. By following the style guide, you can make your code more readable, consistent, and maintainable.
2. Use the Angular CLI: The Angular CLI provides a set of commands that make it easy to create, scaffold, and build Angular applications. It can generate boilerplate code for components, services, and modules, as well as provide a development server and build process. Using the CLI can save you time and ensure that your project follows best practices.
3. Use Reactive Forms: Reactive Forms are a way to build forms in Angular that are reactive to user input. They use an observable-based approach to form handling, which provides a more declarative and flexible way to manage form data. Reactive Forms also offer better performance than Template-driven Forms, especially for large and complex forms.
4. Use lazy loading: Lazy loading is a technique that defers the loading of some parts of your application until they are actually needed. This can improve the initial load time of your application, especially if you have a large number of components and routes. Lazy loading can be used with both modules and components, and can be implemented with the Angular Router.
5. Use a state management library: State management libraries like NgRx and Akita can help you manage the state of your application in a predictable and maintainable way. They provide a centralized store for your application state, as well as tools for handling asynchronous actions and side effects. Using a state management library can make your code more modular and easier to test.
6. Use AOT compilation: Ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation is a way to pre-compile your Angular application during the build process. This can improve the performance of your application, as well as reduce the size of the bundle that is sent to the browser. AOT compilation can be enabled by default with the Angular CLI.
7. Use dependency injection: Dependency injection is a way to provide dependencies to your components, services, and directives without having to create them explicitly. It makes your code more modular, easier to test, and easier to maintain. In Angular, dependency injection is built into the framework and can be used with any class.
8. Use observables: Observables are a powerful way to handle asynchronous events and data streams in Angular. They provide a way to manage data flows and coordinate multiple services in your application. Observables can also be used to build reactive UIs, where your application responds dynamically to user input and other events.
9. Write unit tests: Unit testing is an essential part of any software development process. In Angular, you can use the built-in testing framework to write unit tests for your components, services, and directives. Writing unit tests can help you catch bugs early, improve the quality of your code, and make it easier to refactor and maintain.
10. Optimize performance: Finally, it’s important to optimize the performance of your Angular application. This includes things like minimizing the bundle size, reducing the number of HTTP requests, using lazy loading, and using AOT compilation. You can use tools like the Angular CLI, Chrome DevTools, and Lighthouse to measure and improve the performance of your application.

Some samples for best practices for creating Angular Application

1: Angular Style guide.

// Good component name
@Component({
  selector: 'app-users-list',
  templateUrl: './users-list.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./users-list.component.scss']
})
export class UsersListComponent implements OnInit {
  // ...
}

// Bad component name
@Component({
  selector: 'my-list',
  templateUrl: './my-list.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./my-list.component.scss']
})
export class MyListComponent implements OnInit {
  // ...
}

2: Use Angular CLI

// Creating a new component with the CLI
ng generate component users-list

// Running the development server with the CLI
ng serve

// Building the application for production with the CLI
ng build --prod

3: Use Reactive Forms

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { FormBuilder, FormGroup } from '@angular/forms';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-user-form',
  template: `
    <form [formGroup]="userForm">
      <input formControlName="name" placeholder="Name">
      <input formControlName="email" placeholder="Email">
    </form>
  `
})
export class UserFormComponent {
  userForm: FormGroup;

  constructor(private formBuilder: FormBuilder) {
    this.userForm = this.formBuilder.group({
      name: '',
      email: ''
    });
  }
}

4: Lazy Loading

const routes: Routes = [
  { path: 'home', component: HomeComponent },
  { path: 'users', loadChildren: './users/users.module#UsersModule' },
  { path: '**', component: NotFoundComponent }
];

@NgModule({
  imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)],
  exports: [RouterModule]
})
export class AppRoutingModule { }

5: Use a state management Library

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { EntityState, EntityStore, StoreConfig } from '@datorama/akita';
import { User } from './user.model';

export interface UsersState extends EntityState<User> { }

@Injectable({ providedIn: 'root' })
@StoreConfig({ name: 'users' })
export class UsersStore extends EntityStore<UsersState, User> {
  constructor() {
    super();
  }
}

6: Use AOT Compilation

// In the tsconfig.json file
{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "aot": true
  }
}

7: Use Dependency Injection

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClient } from '@angular/common/http';

@Injectable({
  providedIn: 'root'
})
export class UserService {
  constructor(private http: HttpClient) { }

  getUsers() {
    return this.http.get('/api/users');
  }
}

8: Use Observables

import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';
import { Observable } from 'rxjs';
import { UserService } from './user.service';
import { User } from './user.model';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-users-list',
  template: `
    <ul>
      <li *ngFor="let user of users$ | async">{{ user.name }}</li>
    </ul>
  `
})
export class UsersListComponent implements OnInit {
  users$: Observable<User[]>;

  constructor(private userService: UserService) { }

  ngOnInit() {
    this.users$ = this.userService.getUsers();
  }
}

9: Most important thing, create unit test cases.

We hope this article helped you understand best practices we should follow in our Angular application.

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