Angular Architecture: Best Practices for Scalable Application
By
ChicMic Studios
July 5, 2024
With the web application market booming and reaching its peak, there is a need for scalable apps that can accommodate growing users. Maintaining optimal app performance while adjusting to the increasing data volumes is also necessary. Meanwhile, Angular is a popular JavaScript framework for front-end web development that provides robust features and tools. It offers a modular architecture with component-based design and some advanced features that contribute to scalable app development. Join ChicMic, and let’s dive into angular web development services and the best practices for scalable applications.
What is Scalability?
An application is considered scalable if it can handle constant growth in its data, workload, and users without losing its core performance. Within Angular web development services, the developers need to structure the app so that it tirelessly handles increased demands. As work on scalability begins, the developers consider vertical and horizontal scaling.
Checking Out the Best Practices for Scalable Applications
Angular has quickly established itself as a robust framework for building dynamic and maintainable web apps. With better Angular web development services, adopting the best practices for the architecture is vital.
1. Modular Architecture
Modularity is the backbone of building a scalable Angular application. Breaking your application into discrete, self-contained modules promotes code reusability, maintainability, and separation of concerns. You can implement modular architecture through:
a. Feature Modules:
Divide your application into feature modules where each one encapsulates a specific feature or functionality. For example, you have separate modules for user authentication, product management, and reporting. This way, you can develop and test each feature independently.
b. Core and Shared Modules:
Create a ‘CoreModule’ for singleton services and components to be used throughout the application, like authentication and navigation. Employ a ‘SharedModule’ for reusable components, directives, and pipes. Once done, import the ‘SharedModule’ into other feature modules to avoid redundancy.
c. Lazy Loading:
Lazy loading is an effective technique for improving your application’s initial load time and providing a better user experience. You can use Angular’s router to make it easy to configure lazy loading.
2. State Management
You need effective state management to maintain application scalability with Angular. As your application grows, managing its state will become more and more complex. Here are some strategies for your rescue:
a. NgRx:
It is a popular state management library used for Angular built on Redux’s principles. It provides a single source of truth for your application state, making it easier to manage and debug state changes.
b. Services with Subjects:
For simpler applications, you can rely on ‘behaviorSubject’ or ‘ReplaySubject’ to manage state. This way, you can create a service that holds state and exposes observables to which components can subscribe.
3. Component Design
When you design components with scalability in mind, you ensure they remain manageable and reusable as the application grows.
a. Single Responsibility Principle: You must try to assign each component with a single responsibility and avoid creating “God” components that handle multiple concerns. When you break down complex components into smaller, more focused ones, things become more accessible.
b. Input and Output:
Employ ‘@Input’ and ‘@Output’ decorators to pass data between parent and child components. This way, you can ensure a transparent and predictable data flow.
c. Smart and Dumb Components:
Learn to differentiate between smart (container) and dumb (presentational) components. Your smart components will handle business logic and data fetching, while the dumb components will focus on presentation and user interaction.
4. Dependency Injection
Angular’s dependency injection (DI) system is a powerful tool for managing dependencies and promoting code reusability.
a. Hierarchical Injectors:
You can leverage Angular’s hierarchical injectors to provide services at the appropriate level. For instance, provide a service at the root level if it needs to be shared across the application or at the component level if it’s only required within a specific component tree.
b. Use Injection Tokens:
When dealing with multiple instances of a service or for more complex dependency configurations, use injection tokens to provide and inject dependencies.
5. Routing
While availing Angular web development services, a well-designed routing strategy enhances the scalability of your Angular application.
a. Route Configuration:
Organize your routes logically, grouping related routes into feature modules. Use child routes to handle nested navigation and lazy load feature modules to optimize performance.
b. Route Guards:
Route guards are implemented to protect routes and manage access control. Use `CanActivate,` `CanDeactivate,` `Resolve,` and other guards to handle authentication, data fetching, and cleanup tasks.
6. Performance Optimization
The last stop is optimizing performance to ensure constant scalability, especially as your application grows in size and complexity.
a. OnPush Change Detection:
Use `ChangeDetectionStrategy.OnPush` for components that do not rely on Angular’s default change detection. This reduces unnecessary checks and improves performance.
b. AOT Compilation:
Enable Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation to precompile your Angular templates during the build process. AOT reduces the size of your application and improves load times.
c. Lazy Loading and Code Splitting:
As mentioned earlier, lazy load feature modules reduce your application’s initial load time. Angular CLI supports code splitting, which allows you to load only the necessary code for a particular route.
Concluding Note
There you go! Some of the best practices to build a scalable Angular application while using the best Angular web development services. But there is a lot more that hasn’t been discussed in this blog. Meanwhile, you can instill these practices in your Angular app development to achieve scalability. With continuous work, you understand how to refactor and improve your codebase with scalability in mind at every development stage.
