When I first looked at Play and went through all the samples, I was pretty excited by the zentasks sample and the fluid, clean, effortless Javascript routing that left the work of rendering things to Play. But we decided instead to go with Angular.
Upon going down that road, I thought that Angular would control all aspects of rendering.
However, we have a page that has to get a socket. We were having the socket made on the server, so for now, we still have a Play (Scala) template doing that. We have pared it down to pretty much nothing: create the socket and then inject it into the Angular context.
But we are also trying to do Protractor tests and that is made uglier by having to figure out how to accommodate the Scala template.
Question: should we just ditch the scala template and have the Angular controller call the server and get the socket? That was my favored approach to begin with.
I'm currently working on two Play apps with Angular and in both we decided to have one single main.scala.html file that load all the necessary controllers,services,directives, etc from angular using of require.js.
The goal with Angular is to create a single page app and therefore you should avoid to mix it with server side templates.
You must see your main.scala.html template as the entry point of your single page application. There you generate and load all the pieces you need and give the hand to angular to manage the rest.
I agree with Renato. It's probably better to have a single controller and template that sets up the single page app with angular. Then use AJAX to send requests from the browser to other controllers (see http://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.2.x/JavaJsonRequests).
If want to to avoid Scala templates completely, you can put your web pages and javascript in the public directory and only use AJAX.
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In my Angular SPA, there's some data loaded from the backend that is used throughout the application. This data doesn't change while the app is in use, so to keep things slick for the users I'd like to only load this data once. I can see two possible solutions here:
Load the data when the app is first initialised and attaching it to $rootScope using angular.module.run()
or
The first controller to need the data loads it, and then puts it... somewhere... where everything else can get to it.
Which approach is the "most Angular" way to do this, and how would I start to implement it? Most of the questions on SO seem to be about loading data with the controller rather than when the app itself starts. I'm using 1.4.7 with UI Router if that makes a difference.
You could implement a service which has been sugested by others and ALSO make the service load the data in a lazy way. (Lazy loading pattern described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_loading)
what are the advantages of using 2 MVC architectures(frontend and backend) in same project. AngularJS and Spring MVC.
Without using AngularJs, can I update single div data without loading the entire page? Is AngularJS responsible for updating single <div> data out of multiple <div>s without loading entire page? If so, please explain in detail.
Once you have a single-page application you have to make sure all the different parts of that application are consistent, that's what the MVC/MV-Whatever in the front end is doing for you. That's not an issue in an old-school web application because the relevant state is regenerated with each request, but once the updates are coming in bits and pieces then different pieces of the front end need to be coming from the same model and that model needs to get updated consistently.
Obviously you can implement div updates with raw JavaScript, you don't need frameworks just to do AJAX. The JavaScript frameworks are written in JavaScript, after all. The frameworks and libraries do make things easier by doing things like papering over browser inconsistencies and providing convenient and useful features (like databinding in Angular).
The server-side MVC does become less complex and involved than it was in the old-school web application, you have less POST-Redirect-GET going on, the front end is more in control about what it is asking for. The front-end application is decoupled much more from the server-side because that whole server-side view layer of JSPs or Facelets or whatever is greatly reduced or just missing, instead you have services supplying JSON over HTTP and there is a much more limited, well-defined contract.
You can update a single element of your page without using AngularJS. As an alternative, for example, you can use JQuery.
You should wonder for the best approach for your project. This answer explains very well the differences between this two approaches.
As an aside note, AngularJS is not exactly a MVC architecture. Instead, the community has decided to call it MVW (Model View Whatever). Check this source for more details.
I am starting to develop a business spa application (mobile/desktop web app) with Play Framework 2 and AngularJS. Right now I am tending to go with following solution:
Play behaves as a RESTful application
Play also pre-processes partials
AngularJS handles the rest
My arguments for pre-processing partials are:
Play can remove parts of a partial for a more compact mobile view
Different user roles see more/less content of the partial
Correct language will be loaded into the partial
Are there any disadvantages with this approach? Do you think this would be the best solution for the project's requirements?
Server-side templating is usually what you want to get rid of when building an SPA. In general this should work, but there are a couple of disadvantages:
You are mixing two template languages, Play and AngularJS, so you must be careful not create an unmaintainable mess
Your display logic will also be distributed or duplicated between Angular and Play; in a pure RESTful approach Play would mostly be concerned about access control and JSON (input, output, validation)
You must create a route for every partial instead of just using the assets route
Server side templating slows down compilation speed
Returning different content depending on roles and desktop/mobile might mess with Angular's $template cache
Different user roles see more/less content of the partial
This should be handled by Angular IMHO, Play would just make sure to only serve the appropriate JSON to the right users.
Correct language will be loaded into the partial
How would you reuse Play's Lang in Angular? Build an inline variable? Again, just load it via JSON when the app bootstraps.
First of all i am confuse for my project whether it can use angular.js or not, although i have started using it and i created some customization module with this but when i started applying it for all project i got stuck on many things.
My project is a order taking project and it has structure like this.
In the index page it has 3 panels.
left panle that draws all categories
middle panel that draws all category specific productes
and right panel that draws all the basket items with calculations.
On product click there also appears a model that draws all the customization.
I am using MVC-4.
Every thing on index that includes some layout is a partial view _leftpanl, _middlePnl, _rightPnl, _customziaion.
My concern is.
If i define the routes to the module i created how to fix on ng-view because per scope there will be one ng-view only. and my application load atleast 3 partial views to index page at the same time. So how would i fix on ng-view.
Just gimme some guide lines that i should follow to create this kind of application with angular.js.
Or it is not possible with angular because i think it is not a single page application.
Use the Angular-Breeze SPA template provided by the ASP.Net team http://www.asp.net/single-page-application/overview/templates/breezeangular-template
Don't mix up the Razor view/partials with Angular. Use ASP.Net MVC to manage only the REST interface and use AngularJS to embrace the presentation layer.
Learn the Angular Routing and Templates to mimic your requirements.
https://egghead.io/lessons/angularjs-routeprovider-api
https://egghead.io/lessons/angularjs-ng-view
It seems you have a problem to define what you really need.
AngularJS primary purpose is to do some Single Page Application. Which is, code only in HTML/CSS/JS in the front-end, and reuse your abilities in the back-end to produce DATA only (REST-json is the most classic but you can choose whatever you want).
So if you use a tool outside its primary purpose, you have to do some compromises : Of course you can mix backend template with AngularJS, but in this case, you can forget the router and ng-view.
Use AngularJS if you think you have some complex web interface. If it is only some static text, or even a few input forms here and there you don't necesseraly have to AngularJS, you can just use your classic server-side display rendering.
You could use ng-include to include each of your three partials into one view. Then in each partial view you can specify the controller with ng-controller. For creating the modal popup I would probably use ui bootstrap's modal
Alternatively you could use ui-router to create multiple parallel views.
I have following guidelines here which i hope will help you.
Do not mix Server Side MVC and Client Side MVC. AngularJS is primarly meant to augment the HTML and browser capability. The two-way binding of angularjs is excellent and provides lots of dynamic behavior. MVC4 scores best when we have to do lot of server side processing using the .Net platform capabilities.
But as you spent some good effort on this project and the corresponding technologies, there is a way out. Convert all your Controlller Actions in MVC4 to produce JsonResult and when the angularjs needs data use that, e.g. in $http.get( .
I am currently using the Backbone philosophy which involves dust.js for template style. Recently I came across AngularJS, which extends the HTML syntax with custom elements and attributes.
Cons of Backbone+dust.js environment:
Upgrading components is time consuming.
Module specification and identification is not easy.
If I move my functionality to AngularJS will it be helpful or does it feel the same?
Can anyone explain to me what the major differences among these two libs are, as they seem similar to some extent?
dust.js is purely a templating module. So, it allows the combination of json with a template to deliver html output.
Angular.js is client side framework that allows binding of logic to variables defined in a template (your page).
So, with dust.js you are responsible for deciding when to run the json through the template. Typically you feed in the json on the server (or client) and ask it to render the results.
With angular.js when the model (the json) changes the framework re-renders as appropriate. Triggers for that change could be user actions (such as filling a form in) or it could be due to loading some fresh json from a service.
Typically you would use angular.js if you want a single page JS app (think gmail). dust.js is perhaps more akin to a traditional approach with multi pages with content driven by passing in json.
You could even use the both of them in tandem - server side rendering using dust.js with dynamic client side logic in angular.js.