We are designing a complex web app which runs in multiple browser windows .will use AngularJS
(note it has to look/feel like one app – just that it is spread across several browser windows)
Javascript allows a parent window to reference the objects on other windows as long as the parent retains references to the other windows. Those objects can be accessed either by the native accessors or, for example, by jQuery.
Is a multi-window app something that's been done with Angular before? How would such an app be structured to be scalable?
(I have seen the big 'angular-app' reference app which is a template for large scale apps (if I could only get it working!) but haven't found anything on using multiple browser windows...
Probably not the answer you're looking for, but from my experience w/ AngularJS it seems what you are looking for in an anti-pattern for angular. Specifically, angular is big on scoping - so a controller and view would only 'know' about its own stuff. Any other controllers/views on the same page, or other windows, etc. wouldn't necessarily have references to each other. Rather, an application on a page would have a $rootScope which can serve as a message bus w/ $emit(), on$().
So, perhaps look at this as loosely coupled parts with a centralized message bus that figures out which windows get what events. Then each part (app/controller/view) is just responding to those events.
Note: We had a test app that simulated multiple UIWebViews in a mobile app by hosting each angular app in and iFrames and used this approach successfully. Very composable, very testable.
HTH
Related
A client has tasked me with refactoring their React app to support multiple screens. I have some ideas on how to approach this, and would like to get some feedback to see if I am on the right track.
The problem:
We have a relatively complex React app, and the client feels that splitting the app across multiple windows will make for a better UX.
As example of this split-screen set up, imagine that window 1 shows some data, and window 2 contains UI elements that allow you to filter that data. In this manner, the app is split across 2 windows.
(The 2 browser windows is a hard constraint imposed by the product owner. Other options like grid layout managers are not considered.)
The solution (so far):
We need to share state across two browser windows. To do so, we can use:
Local storage to keep track of state and use StorageEvent listeners to coordinate state changes between the two windows.
We can also use some of the web APIs designed to pass data between windows including: shared web worker, broadcast channels, and window.postmessage(). I learned about these in Blake Zimmerman's presentation here, PDF ~2mb.
This framework - neo.mjs, which uses web workers. I would rather not abstract the low-level details to a framework, because I am not familiar with web workers myself yet.
The question:
Is there something I am missing? Are there other tools I can use to share state between windows? Any good articles I can read?
I am also having trouble visualizing how to structure the React app to account for multiple displays. The best I could come up with is something like this:
<Main>
{isComponentAShown && <ComponentA/>}
{isComponentBShown && <ComponentB/>}
</Main>
where isComponent_X_Shown dictate which components the browser window should be displaying at any one time. These boolean flags will be part of the state shared by the two browser windows. Is there a better way to organize the App layouts to account for dual screen?
Thank you!
We have huge enterprise application written in angularjs.
Now we have to migrate to angular, so we have ruled out an option of hybrid approach angular suggests using "ngUpgrade".
So now we are creating a new application in angular, which means we have 2 applications "angularjs(old)" and angular(new).
So to switch between these two applications can be done without refresh using angular-spa.
I was trying to find if there is another framework, where navigating between two apps happens without refreshing(without refreshing entire page by navigating to new html).
Possible solution:
Use a new Angular application as a wrapper, then just use iframe to show the application you want depends on the context - old or new. The issue you might face is changing the iframe, but I guess you can use postMessage to communicate between the apps.
A bit more sophisticated:
Use Angular Elements to create your hybrid app.
I really recommend you to watch Erin talks from the last Angular connect about how Google made the migration from js to Angular.
I've recently tried the micro-frontend architecture described here:
https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/micro-frontends.html
Each app on different code repository, runtime build and quite easy to implement. Take a look :)
I am learning MEAN Stack. I started from learning Angular(from angular.io) now I am learning node.js and express.js
My question is, if there is angular for front end in MEAN Stack then why there are views and template engines in express.js at back-end? Are they alternative for each other or complements each other? what is the boundary for the role and responsibility of these two?
I am looking forward for someone's help in clarifying of my concept for role these two technologies(express' views and angular) used in mean stack.
In order to answer your question, let me explain what is angular and what are template engines in express?
What is Angular?
Angular is a platform that makes it easy to build applications with the web. Angular combines declarative templates, dependency injection, end to end tooling, and integrated best practices to solve development challenges. Angular empowers developers to build applications that live on the web, mobile, or the desktop.
what is template engine?
A template engine enables you to use static template files in your application. At runtime, the template engine replaces variables in a template file with actual values and transforms the template into an HTML file sent to the client. This approach makes it easier to design an HTML page.
Some popular template engines that work with Express are Pug, Mustache, and EJS. The Express application generator uses Jade as its default, but it also supports several others.
So,
Angular is a framework with a templating component baked in. You use it to create Single page Web Applications which means that DOM modification is happening on the client side and the app exchange with server only data. If your concern is template it is plain HTML.
Whereas, template engines' rendered views are sent to client each time by server whenever request is made each time a new page is rendered on server and sent to the client which is Great for static sites but not for rich site interactions.
If there is angular for front-end in MEAN Stack then why there are views and template engines in express.js at back-end?
This is because not every time generating views from angular is recommended sometimes it is better to use Template Engines to generate views and send the rendered page to a client, generating views at client side has its own pros and cons and generating views at server side has its own.
Generating views using template engines (i.e. at server-side):
pros:
Search engines can crawl the site for better SEO.
The initial page load is faster.
Great for static sites.
cons:
Frequent server requests.
An overall slow page rendering.
Full page reloads.
Non-rich site interactions.
Generating views using angular engines (i.e. at client-side):
pros:
Rich site interactions
Fast website rendering after the initial load.
Great for web applications.
Robust selection of JavaScript libraries.
cons:
Low SEO if not implemented correctly.
The initial load might require more time.
In most cases, requires an external library.
So, after knowing the pros and cons, you yourself can better decide that in particular case which one is better for you. Mean Stack has provided options for developers.
As far as your question regarding the role of these two technologies is concerned, Angular is a lot more view generator only, It has features like routing, it as services two-way data binding etc while the template engines are meant to render HTML so that it can be sent to the client.
I hope you will find this answer useful.
References:
what is the template engine?
what is angular?
pros/cons
Angular is a full-fledged front-end framework that comes with its own way of doing templating, using angular-specific markup in your HTML. If you use Angular as your framework, you're more or less stuck with their way of templating within the Angular portion of your application.
Angular Features
It is a framework written in Javascript language
Manages state of models
Integrates with other UI tools
Manipulates DOM
Allows writing custom HTML codes
It is meant for javascript developers to create dynamic web pages in a quick time
NodeJS
It serves the web
It is runtime built on javascript engine in google chrome
It can be considered as a lightweight server which can serve client requests in a more
simpler way than java does
It performs communication operation with databases, web-sockets,
middleware etc.
Why we use angular for Tempting not Express/Node tempting Engine
Server-side rendering is the most common method for displaying information onto the screen. It works by converting HTML files in the server into usable information for the browser.
Whenever you visit a website, your browser makes a request to the server that contains the contents of the website. The request usually only takes a few milliseconds, but that ultimately depends on a multitude of factors:
Your internet speed
how many users are trying to access the site and
how optimized the website is, to name a few
Once the request is done processing, your browser gets back the fully rendered HTML and displays it on the screen. If you then decide to visit a different page on the website, your browser will once again make another request for the new information. This will occur each and every time you visit a page that your browser does not have a cached version of.
It doesn’t matter if the new page only has a few items that are different than the current page, the browser will ask for the entire new page and will re-render everything from the ground up.
How client-side rendering works
When developers talk about client-side rendering, they’re talking about rendering content in the browser using JavaScript. So instead of getting all of the content from the HTML document itself, you are getting a bare-bones HTML document with a JavaScript file that will render the rest of the site using the browser.
This is a relatively new approach to rendering websites, and it didn't really become popular until JavaScript libraries started incorporating it into their style of development.
See Examples HerePratical Example
Basically template engines in Express are mostly used for displaying 404 and other server error messages. I find them ideal for such use cases. Using template engines for complex front end rendering is bad and not a good practice.
Express JS is a web framework on top of nodejs http module. Whereas Angular JS is a front end framework which doesnot depend on NodeJs server to run. Conceptually both are similar in few features like routing whereas implementation is different
I want to build a mid-size application using NodeJS and NW.js (formerly known as node-webkit). The application will grab some data from the internet but isn't talking with one special service which is under my control.
Is it a good idea to use AngularJS nevertheless or is the MVC approach of Angular oversized if there isn't neither a database nor a webservice on the controller layer?
I think Angular would be really fine for databinding and GUI handling, but I'm not sure if it's the right approach for this kind of application.
I see no reason not to use Angular in an nwjs project. I do it myself in the app I just finished building. It's a local-only deck tracking app for hearthstone that never communicates over the internet at runtime. It only ever monitors a log file that is generated by the Hearthstone game. Since the way I'm display information to the user is still technically a web page with a full DOM, Angular makes perfect sense since I'm already comfortable using it.
I'm beginner to appgyver steroids.
I have angular project. Now I need to make iOS application using AppGyver.
Instead of modify root view and point it to my angular app url (http://www.yourapp.com) can I add my angular app source / angular project build to AppGyver project make it iOS application.
Appreciate your comments
Gayan
You can run steroids create yourApp. This will walk you through the generation of a multi page or single page application. You can then move the structure of your angular application into the /app folder. Check out the example that the steroids create method generates and see the structure there.
You may notice some differences at first. It may take some testing to see what is failing if anything once you port things over. If you used $rootScope for anything it is not as reliable in my experience in an iOS or Android application. There are other methods for passing data between views and broadcasting (publish/subscribe) to other controllers.
You will want to use the iOS simulator or http://localhost:4567/app/moduleName/oneOfYourViewsYouAreTesting.html in your favorite browser while steroids connect is running to debug.
The version of Angular that is coming with this now is AngularJS v1.3.15 installed via bower. You may want to verify things are compatible with your current Angular version.
Ionic is used and Supersonic so you may see conflict with existing CSS or even javascript depending on what you've implemented.
There will be some tricks to learn about preloading views in the structure.coffee file and load times / rootView / initialView. There is lots of support if you come across any issues.
This forum has been really helpful in figuring out any issues I've come across. The Appgyver team is usually pretty responsive to questions directly as well.
They are updating the platform in a few days, and they say big changes are coming. They are hiring a lot of developers right now to take care of GitHub issues as well as build out the rest of their incomplete components.