What is AngularJS and Why to use it?

AngularJS is an open-source JavaScript framework developed by Google. It helps you to create single-page applications, one-page web applications that only require HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the client side. It is based on MV-* pattern and build well structured, easily testable, and maintainable front-end applications.

AngularJS has changed the way to web development. It does not based on jQuery to perform its operations. Till now you are using ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, PHP, JSP, Ruby on Rails for web development but now you can do your complete web development by using most powerful and adaptive JavaScript Framework AngularJS. There is no doubt, JavaScript frameworks like AngularJs, Ember etc. are the future of web development.

How AngularJS is different from other JavaScript Framework?

1. AngularJS markup lives in the DOM.

2. AngularJS uses plain old JavaScript objects.

3. AngularJS is leverages with Dependency Injection.

Today, AngularJS is most popular and dominant JavaScript framework for professional web development. It is well suited for small, large and any sized web apps and web application. This graph of Google Search Trends shows the interest of developers into JavaScript frameworks over time:

Why Angular JS?

There are numerous of reasons to choose AngularJS as you web development framework. Some of them are listed below:

1. It is based on MVC pattern which helps you to properly organize your web apps or web application.

2. It extends HTML by attaching directives to your HTML markup with new attributes or tags and expressions in order to define very powerful templates.

3. It also allows you to create your own directives, crafting reusable components that fill your needs and abstracting away all the DOM manipulation logic.

4. It supports two-way data binding i.e. connects your HTML (views) to your JavaScript objects (models) seamlessly. In this way your model will be immediately reflected into your view without the need for any DOM manipulation or event handling (with jQuery).

5. It encapsulates the behavior of your application in controllers which are instantiated with the help of dependency injection.

6. It supports services that can be injected into your controllers to use some utility code to fulfill your need. For example it provides $http service to communicate with REST service.

7. It helps you to structure and test your JavaScript code very easily.

8. Also, AngularJS is mature community to help you. It has widely support over the internet.

AngularJS Developmet IDE

Here is a small list of popular IDE used for AngularJS development.

1. Visual Studio 2012/2013 Express or higher

2. Eclipse

3. WebStorm

4. Sublime Text

5. TextMate

What do you think?

I hope you will have better understanding of AngularJS. I would like to have feedback from my blog readers. Your valuable feedback, question, or comments about this article are always welcome.

Further Reading