I'm new to AngularJS and have gone through its tutorial, read some of its documentation, and I understand the main aspects. But I'd like some help in organizing the structure of my project.
Basically, I want to have a single page app. There will be a few main sections, e.g: Customers, Sales, Reports, etc. Each section will have its own pages e.g 'Add a Customer', 'View Sales reports', etc.
1) So, should I make one module for my app, with different routes and controllers for every screen?
2) Or should I have multiple modules, e.g one module for 'Customers', one for 'Sales', etc?
3) Say I have a 'Add Customer' form which has a bunch of fields. I want this form to be interactive e.g if the user selects his country from a dropdown, I want to load the cities for that country via an ajax request. Would I do this event handling within my controller, or should I make a directive for it? What if I'm only ever going to need this functionality for one form, should I still go to the trouble of writing a directive?
4) I want to build a CRUD form builder type of library, where I would add the fields that are required, and it would in return generate the add/edit/delete/list views and forms, alongwith the required form validation. Something like this:
var crud = new CrudLib();
crud.addTextbox('first').label('First Name').rules('required');
crud.addTextbox('email').label('Email').rules('required,email');
//....
crud.init();
Should I make this a module, or a directive, or something else?
(Too many questions in one question.)
1) and 2): organize your controllers and services into modules however you like. I tend to put "related things" into a separate module. E.g., a LoginCtrl, LogoutCtrl, UserService, etc. I put into a User.js file, which is a module.
3) AJAX interactions should be put in a service/factory/provider. Event handling should be in directives. (Directives may seem a bit cumbersome/overkill at times, but use them whenever you need to manipulate the DOM, attach event handlers, or reuse a chunk of HTML.)
4) You will need to write a directive if you need custom form validation. See also How can I use Angular to output dynamic form fields?
Related
I am trying to learn Angular JS and use it in my web app project and am looking for some guidance as well as answers to specific angular js questions. Tech stack I am using is MySQL db, Java w/ Spring Framework, HTML/CSS/Bootstrap/JS, etc..
The purpose of the app is basically a "social media craigslist" where it will have:
1. User accounts
2. Ability to create a "newsfeed-esque" post (one "view")
3. Ability to create a sale post (separate "view")
4. A view for an "inventory"
5. A view for a "wishlist"
etc..
(note: Items 2-5 are accessed via a nav bar of sorts that sits on the left side of my page and the idea was to have the main section of the page switch the content based on what nav item you clicked.. more later..)
What I was doing was writing a bunch of Javscript code to make calls to my web services (grabbing static content to populate drop downs, sending user login info for logging in, etc..) and the < script > tags were growing and all of this was living in my index.html page and I thought it might make more sense to use something like Angular JS and structure it a bit differently and "modularize" the code so it wasn't a giant mess in index page. I was also doing some manual .hide() and .show() JS stuff so I thought that it also might make more sense to switch out the content using something like AngularJS instead of having maximum ONE .show() active at once and then having to do as many .hide()'s as I would need to, to manually switch out the content. This is sounding like a SPA (single page app) right?
I have researched AngularJS StackOverflow posts and looked at w3schools and other helpful websites but am having trouble with how to structure this and use best practices not only with code efforts but organizational as well.
1) Am I correct in thinking Angular would make the hide and show of content easier?
2) I would like to make each "feature" of my website have its own controller and have Controller1.js, Controller2.js, etc.. but do I need to have a
var app = angular.module('myApp', []); ...
line at the top of each controller or do I need something like a main controller with that in there only once and then a call to each controller from a main controller? Or is this not even how I should go about it? Thought process was again to modularize and avoid having one giant beastly file with all my JS logic in it.
3) I assume that I need to use the ng-route stuff (is this correct?) in order to do that hide and show of html content? (items 2-5 listed above) But in what file should that live? a javascript controller file? index.html? other?
4) I read you can only have one ng-view per application. Does that mean that you can only switch/change the content for ONE < div > / section of your web app, OR can you have multiple different divs being changed?
5) fyi - my current file structure is pretty much this.. is this how it should be?
-Java Resources (java code)
...
-WebContent
-img
-META-INF
-resources
-css (folder)
-js (folder with js files - controllers)
-WEB-INF
-lib (folder)
-views (folder)
-xx-servlet.xml
-web.xml
-index.html
-pom.xml
A lot of my questions are just because I am new to AngularJS and not seasoned in JS itself so am trying to better understand. Thanks for any and all help in advance.
First of all, if you want to use multiple views per app then you should use angular-ui-router module instead of angular-route module.
Now, we come to the file handling. So, for that you can make as much file as you can to define controllers, config, services and factories for the app. There are three ways of doing this.
The first one is putting var app = angular.module("MyApp",[]); in first file and defining controllers and services like app.controller('ctrl', ControllerFunction) in each of the other files below the first one. But, personally i don't prefer to use this way as you are exposing your app as a global variable here.
The second way is to create a main module in first file using angular.module('MyApp',[]) and in other files you can get it and define controllers using angular.module('MyApp').controller('ctrl', ControllerFunction). This is the safer way than the previous one.
The third way is to create a different module in each of the files and using all the modules in a single main module as dependencies. Like below
in one file
angular.module('Module1',[]).controller('ctrl1',CtrlFun1);
in another file
angular.module('Module2',[]).controller('ctrl2',CtrlFun2);
and in the main file, the main module, which is to be bootstraped
angular.module('MyApp',['Module1','Module2'])
This is the safest way to define services in different files. I personally advise this way of using multiple js files in single app. Because here you care not exposing a global variable or a single module, so anyone cannot inject some code using console easily.
I have a component which is treated like a "blog post" for example. A single piece of content that contains data. I've created a bunch of templates that can be rendered using ng-include in my "blog" template.
A few examples:
Blog content (title, author, etc.)
Related Posts
Author information
Email signup
(Any infinite number of possibilities)
I can't hardcode these into the template for a few reasons.
Each section needs to be able to be presented in any order (order dependent upon JSON)
All of these options need to be optional
Normally I would use some kind of foreach loop in the angular template and conditionally load each template via ng-include, but I've read this could have a major performance hit.
What's the best way to approach this using Angular 1.6.4 and components?
What about using a function to decide which template to include? This is a very generic example.
<div ng-include="vm.getTemplate(myVar)">
</div>
function
vm.getTemplate = function(myVar) {
//logic to decide template
return '../templates/someTemplate.html';
}
I'm a newbie when it comes to PHP. I wrote some JS to make AJAX requests for my project and it worked well, but I don't have any idea how to convert that into PHP.
I've prepared layouts like the following:
mainLayout.php,
userLayout.php,
offerLayout.php,
In those files are some PHP and MySQL parts that build an HTML page.
In Ajax it was easy to navigate between many users using only one page and replacing some divs with data...
But a huge minus was that you couldn't have a single address reference a user profile or the offer (like mywebsite.com/user1).
Now, when I use PHP I want to achieve same layout effect.
How can I avoid creating a thousands of pages (of course even dynamically it seems to be a waste of memory IMO) like user1.php, user2.php, offer1.php, etc.
I don't know how to achieve the effect of being on a site like example.com/user277373.php without creating thousands of files but only one template.
Two solutions I see is either you use GET to parse your data:
http://example.com/?data=1736861
and than access it over the $_GET variable:
$id = $_GET["data"];
($id will be 1736861)
or you use the flight php extension, that will look something like this:
Flight::route('/id/#id', function($id){
echo "ID: $id";
});
and the URL would look like http://example.com/id/1736861. You can also use multiple variables with the flight module.
I hope this helped, Sebastian
Are you familiar with any MVC frameworks? If not, I would highly recommend getting accustomed to the MVC design paradigm. MVC = Model View Controller. From Wikipedia, a short excerpt:
A model stores data that is retrieved according to commands from the controller and displayed in the view.
A view generates new output to the user based on changes in the model.
A controller can send commands to the model to update the model's state (e.g., editing a document). It can also send commands to its
associated view to change the view's presentation of the model (e.g.,
scrolling through a document).
Two of the key components of MANY frameworks (in pretty much any language), are Routes and Templates. When utilizing a routing system, you're able to specify a template for every page loaded that matches a specific route. For instance, site.com/people/:id where ':id' can be any value in the URL, and be configured to use "person.html" for the HTML output. Note that "person.html" receives variables/data that will dynamically populate content, e.g. <h2>Hello, {{name}}</h2>
So, to clarify, site.com/people/252, site.com/people/12, site.com/people/5, site.com/people/john would all match the site.com/people/:id route path where :id is dynamic, and your system will use ONE TEMPLATE (which you specify) to display all the data. Don't forget, when that route path is met, that's only step 1. You will probably need to take that :id run some database query and pass that data into the template.
A popular micro PHP framework called Slim, might be a good starting point. Here's documentation for its way of handling Routes and Templates:
https://www.slimframework.com/docs/objects/router.html
https://www.slimframework.com/docs/features/templates.html
Slim is commonly used with Twig, a super popular PHP template engine. Here's its website/documentation: http://twig.sensiolabs.org/
And if that wasn't enough, Slim has a super handy First App Walkthrough that will show you routes, database connection, and templates: https://www.slimframework.com/docs/tutorial/first-app.html
Hope this information helps you on your journey – Best of luck!
I am planning to create several modules in my company's application and I'm having trouble designing the architecture for the modules. I have done research and it seems like either you are supposed to use one module per page, or create a 'master' module that depends on all of your other modules. I don't like this approach because it means I have to load all of the javascript for every aspect of my application for every single page. That seems inherently wrong, but I also can't seem to figure out how to handle it the other way if I need to use one module in multiple places on a page. For example, I have a membership module that I have and I'm attaching to the header section of my web page. This would be intended for logging in, registration, and performing a 'forgot password' type workflow.
On another page dedicated to changing a password (from a reset link) the header is also present, but I want to include the password reset functionality in the membership module. I've read that one methodology of designing your application is by functionality/feature. I figured membership was an appropriate application of that, but now I'm not sure since I am having trouble applying the membership module more than once on any particular page.
Am I on the right track, or is there a preferred method for this? Should I have a separate module for the header and one for the rest of the page? Should I just bite the bullet and load everything? (I hope not...)
I should also note that this is an ASP.Net MVC application where we are still heavily relying on MVC for serving views and partial views. As such I wanted to use a render javascript section to dynamically load only the javascript necessary for that page to function. Is this a farce?
<header ng-app="membership">
//stuff for header membership functions
</header>
<div ng-app="membership">
//somewhere else that needs membership, outside of header
</div>
I personally like Mini SPAs (Silos) instead of full SPA. You can watch Miguel A Castro's video, and download the source at his website.
What it does is when a request comes in, it goes to ASP.Net MVC Route first. Then, Angular Route takes over the rest. It is a very slick design.
FYI: Angular 2 is right around the corner, so I went ahead and updated those to Angular 1.5 Compotent so that I can convert to Angular 2 easily later.
If you want, you can stop there. I went one step future, and use Strongly Typed Views using Matt Honeycutt's Building Strongly-typed AngularJS Apps with ASP.NET MVC 5 approach.
Then I implemented Angular Helpers like Axel Zarate's ANGULAR.NET – HELPERS FOR ASP .NET MVC 4.
On an Angular application, as it is a Single Page Application, yes, all your javascript must be loaded. It's the code of your application and it's necessary. That's done only once on first page load.
You're always on the same page, but on a different state.
One good approach is to define a master module who include all other modules. Those modules can also include other "sub modules" they need.
angular.module('App', [
'App.Membership'
// ...
// All others modules you need, including 3rd party modules
])
Then, on each module, you can define the different states associated and their controller
angular.module('App.Membership', [
// Module dependencies
])
.config(['$stateProvider', function($stateProvider) {
//State definition
$stateProvider.state('membership', {
parent: 'app',
url: '/member',
controller: 'MembershipCtrl',
template: '<ui-view/>'
});
}]);
You can also add a global controller to handle elements who are always present, like a header.
Hope this helps
I am attempting to place multiple controllers within my template partials with AngularJS- The problem I am encountering is that of the first layer, direct-linking to these sub-controllers and their related snippets.
An example would be a management page for user accounts, say I am on a user-list and wanted to change a user from the list's password, I click on their change-password button, and want to redirect the user to #/ManageUsers/ChangePassword/?UserID=<uid here> rather than #/ManageUsers_ChangePassword/ or similar, but the Angular documentation (Or lack thereof) on the subject suggests that this is impossible, or not 'The Angular Way'...
Being that my team wants to keep these separate controllers as partials, is there a non-hacky way to do this with Angular?
There has been recently published a blog post about one possible way of solving deep linking with AngularJS. It has a parent/child style of implementation where parent sections do not need to be updated if you need to change only contents of the child, which makes it pretty neat.
It's here: http://www.bennadel.com/blog/2441-Nested-Views-Routing-And-Deep-Linking-With-AngularJS.htm
why not direct to #/ManageUsers/ChangePassword/:UserID ? You can get the UserID from $routeParams. See an example on the $route page.
You can even create routes like #/ManageUsers/:OrganizationID/:SectorId/:UserID/ChangePassword/Confirmation that will be used by the url #/ManageUsers/10/2/32/ChangePassword/Confirmation