DEV Community: Amit Khirale

Comparison Between AngularJS VS React in 2018

Amit Khirale — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 12:51:54 +0000

In this article, We are comparing 2 most popular technologies for the front end development: Angular and React. We are going to compare them from the project architect and by developers perspective as well as companies perspective.

Comparing Angular and react is very popular topic nowadays. React and Angular are both highly advanced, widely adopted JavaScript technologies that we use to create responsive web apps and interactive single-page applications. The number of JavaScript tools for fast single-page application(SPAs) development is constantly growing, So choosing right framework for web developers is more challenging.

Comparison AngularJS vs React

The main differences between AngularJS (Framework) and React (the library) are componentization, data binding, performance, dependency resolution, directives, and templating. Let’s look at each of these aspects in details.

AngularJS

Angular version 2 and above has been around less then React, but if you count in the history of its predecessor, AngularJS, the picture evens out. It’s maintained by Google and used in Analytics, Adwords and Google Fiber. Since AdWords is one of the key projects in Google, it is clear they have made a big bet on it and is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

React

React is developed and maintained by Facebook and also used in their products like Instagram and WhatsApp. It has been around for roughly four and a half years now, so it’s not exactly new. It’s also one of the most popular projects on GitHub, with about 92,000 stars at the time of writing. Sounds good to me.

Componentization

AngularJS

AngularJS has a very complex and fixed structure because it's based on the Model-View-Controller architecture typical of single-page applications. An object $scope in AngularJS is responsible for the Model part, which is initialized by the Controller and then transformed into HTML to create the View for the user. AngularJS provides many standard services, factories, controllers, directives, and other components.

We break the code into several files in AngularJS. For example, when we create a reusable component with our own directive, controller, and template, we must describe each chunk of code in a separate file. Once we describe our directive, we then add a link to our template in the directive to couple these parts. AngularJS directives represent the template logic for your application. The template is HTML extended with AngularJS directives, generally written as tags or attributes. We also add controllers to provide our models with necessary $scope or context. Controllers are written in separate files as well. When we modularize our application in such a way, we can reuse our template or component in a different part of the website and this is very helpful for the AngularJS Development Company because it saves a lot of time and speeds up the development process.

React

There is no “correct" structure for applications built with React
It is a large JavaScript library that helps us update the View for the user. But React still doesn't let us create applications on its own. The library lacks the model and controller layers. To fill in the gap, Facebook introduced Flux, which has numerous variants nowadays, to control the application workflow.
React provides a very simple and efficient way to build component trees. It boasts a functional programming style where component definitions are declarative. Composing your app from React components is like composing a JavaScript program from functions.

Data Binding

In MVC Patterns the binding is the most important topic to pass any data in uni-direction or bi-directional flow.Data Binding is the data synchronization processes that work between the model and view components.

AngularJS

Data-binding in Angular apps is the automatic synchronization of data between the model and view components. The way that Angular implements data-binding lets you treat the model as the single-source-of-truth in your application. The view is a projection of the model at all times. When the model changes, the view reflects the change and vice versa.
It is simply attachment of data from Model to View or vice-versa in a sync way so that whenever any change occurs to any of model or view, other should show the change and this is sync.

React

The best feature in react is Virtual-Dom. React injects data into its rendered views at construct time, be that when the root view is created or via a nested view.React uses one-way data binding, meaning we are able to direct the flow of data only in one direction. Inside the class, the data that’s passed is accessed via the props property of the current context.

Performance

AngularJS

There are two things to take into consideration when we talk about Angular's performance. As we mentioned previously, Angular 1.x and higher relies on two-way data binding. This concept is based on “dirty checking," a mechanism that can make our AngularJS Application Development laggy.

When we bind values in HTML with our model, AngularJS creates a watcher for each binding to track changes in the DOM. Once the View updates, AngularJS compares the new value with the initial value and runs the $digest loop. The $digest loop then checks not only values that have actually changed, but also all others values that are tracked through watchers. This is why performance will decrease a lot if your application has too many watchers.

Another shortcoming of the AngularJS framework is the way it works with the DOM. Unlike React, AngularJS applies changes in the real DOM in the browser. When the real DOM gets updated, the browser has to change many internal values to represent a new DOM. This also has a negative impact on application performance.
Poor performance is the main reason why Angular 2 supporters re-worked how Angular changes the program state. Angular 2 and the latest Angular 4 framework versions also feature server-side rendering and one-way data binding similarly to React. Still, Angular 2 and 4 offer two-way data binding as an option.

React

React introduced the concept of the virtual DOM, which is one of the greatest advantages of React in comparison with AngularJS. How does the virtual DOM work? When our HTML document is loaded, React creates a lightweight DOM tree from JavaScript objects and saves it on the server.
When the user, enters new data in the field in the browser, React creates a new virtual DOM and then compares it with the previously saved DOM. The library finds dissimilarities between two object models in such a way and rebuilds the virtual DOM once again, but with new changed HTML. All this work is done on the server, which reduces the load on the browser.
Now, instead of sending completely new HTML to the browser, React sends the HTML only for the changed element. This approach is much more efficient than what AngularJS offers.

Resolving Dependencies

AngularJS

Dependency Injection is a software design pattern in which components are given their dependencies instead of hardcoding them within the component. This relieves a component from locating the dependency and makes dependencies configurable. This helps in making components reusable, maintainable and testable.
AngularJS automatically finds appropriate objects that are injected as the $routeParams, $filter, store, and $scope parameters. There are two functions that make dependency injection possible in the AngularJS framework: $inject and $provide.

React

The difference between React and AngularJS with regards to dependency injection is that React doesn’t offer any concept of a built-in container for dependency injection. But this doesn't mean we have to think of a method to inject dependencies in our React project. You can use several instruments to inject dependencies automatically in a React application. Such instruments include Browserify, RequireJS, ECMAScript 6 modules which we can use via Babel, ReactJS-di, and so on. The only challenge is to pick a tool to use.

Directives and Templates

AngularJS

Directives in AngularJS are a way to organize our code around the DOM. If working with AngularJS, we access the DOM only through directives. AngularJS has many standard directives, such as ng-bind or ng-app, but sometimes we make our own directives in AngularJS to insert data into templates. The template must have an element with our directive written as an attribute. It's as simple as that. But AngularJS directives, if defined fully, are sophisticated. The object with settings, which we return in the directive, contains around ten properties. Such properties as templateUrl or template are easy to understand.

React

React doesn’t offer division into templates and directives or template logic. The template logic should be written in the template itself. To see what this looks like, open an example from GitHub. You will notice that React's component app.TodoItem is created with a standard React.createClass() method. We pass an object with properties to this function. Such properties as componentDidUpdate, shouldComponentUpdate, handleKeyDown, or handleSubmit represent the logic – what will happen with our template. In the end of the component, we usually define the render property, which is a template to be rendered in the browser. Everything is located in one place, and the JSX syntax in the template is easy to understand even if you don’t know how to write in JSX. It's clear what is going to happen with our template, how it should be rendered and what information will be presented for it by properties.

Conclusion:

As you come to the bottom of the discussion, now few points are clear to you on both the frameworks and which is better for web application development. Hence, if you are deciding to choose one of them, then here’s my opinion.If you are trying to develop a basic web app then both can be used. Still, ReactJS is SEO friendly, real-time and compatible with heavy traffic. Whereas, AngularJS offers smooth development and testing along with reliability.

What is and how does ReactJS work?

Amit Khirale — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 12:51:00 +0000

When choosing which technology to use in the frontend of a new project, we face a delicate and important decision that will greatly influence the future of our application, so it is important to choose technologies that complement and facilitate development. Facebook recently released ReactJS, an open source Javascript library, which has benefited them in the development of some of its platforms, for example, Instagram. This library, despite having somewhat controversial details, offers great benefits in performance, modularity and promotes a very clear flow of data and events, facilitating the planning and development of complex apps.

It is important to note that ReactJS is a library focused on visualization. If we are starting a project we can build on the Flux architecture, but if we already have a project using an MVC Framework like AngularJS we can leave AngularJS as Controller and ReactJS take care of the views. This makes sense because ReactJS has a superior performance at the moment to manipulate the DOM, and this has a great impact when dealing with long lists that constantly change in our visualization.

The secret of ReactJS to have a very high performance, is that it implements something called Virtual DOM and instead of rendering the entire DOM in each change, which is what is normally done, it makes the changes in a copy in memory and then uses an algorithm to compare the properties of the in-memory copy with those of the DOM version and thus apply changes only in the varying parts. This may sound like a lot of work, but in practice it is much more efficient than the traditional method we have a list of two thousand elements in the interface and ten changes occur, it is more efficient to apply ten changes, locate the components that had a change in their properties and render these ten elements, apply ten changes and render two thousand elements.

There are more steps to plan and program, but it offers a better user experience and a very linear planning. An important feature of ReactJS is that it promotes the flow of data in one direction, instead of the typical bidirectional flow in modern Frameworks, this makes it easier to plan and detect errors in complex applications, in which the flow of information can reach To be very complex, leading to difficult mistakes to locate that can make life very sad.

Hopefully, that will give you a bit of a head-start on React, and help you avoid some of the more common mistakes while creating your Web Applications.

Dynamic Web Development Trends in 2017

Amit Khirale — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 09:02:51 +0000

We have been working on multiple platforms for Web Application Development with the mission that aim is always to maximize the value that you, our client, will get from our work. To achieve that goal as it decides the output of the product, the choice of technology is very crucial.

Web application development has traditionally been known a complicated expenditure to get all the components, user interface, and the data behind them (Backend part) working properly after merging. Many server-side technologies are readily available for developing and running web applications. But the framework, software, anchor required to handle everything on the server side may become very expensive or will increase the cost of application.

Handling the application logic on the client side could be an attractive alternative for reducing cost and improving performance, as today's end user servers & devices have a lot of computing power. Multiple JavaScript frameworks have been created for developing best AngularJS Development Services.

However, with all the available JS frameworks, we have lots of different technologies to choose for our web applications. Which are the one frameworks that will fulfill your needs? Which one the most reliable and fastest to develop, which framework offers the best operability and maintainability, which framework integrates the best way? Who scales better? how well the framework is documented, and how does its future look like after developing?what is the scope of this framework? You probably don't want to find yourself working with a technology that is outdated.

we recognize these major issues and always eager to find the best suitable framework and technology for your projects. After discussing with experts and reviewing all the frameworks, we've come to the conclusion that AngularJS is to be recommended.

About AngularJS

AngularJS is a JavaScript framework originally created by Google, who majorly contributed to its development. The basic idea of Angular is to merge well-known patterns, components, and development practices in one framework that is simple to use and motivate to follow the best practices of developing best web-based applications or services. The main goal with Angular that developers can and will choose not just any solution that works, but the best-known solution.

To make that working, AngularJS supports many standard components such as its services, views, models, controllers. This may lead Angular to making use of two important software design methods or pattern.

1.Model View Controller

2.Dependency Injection.

Besides that, Angular makes use of its services, paying attention to balancing complexity and modularity.

Essentially, AngularJS is made with uncommon consideration regarding testing. It bolsters composing test amicable code, which practically speaking prompts higher quality software and fewer intrusions in administration and business. Precise additionally bolster well the utilization of jQuery library, which guarantees that a number of the famous web advancement practices can be utilized for some time recently.

At long last, when looking at web technologies, you can't disregard the notoriety consider. AngularJS has high selection and development rate, and the framework has dynamic advancement advance going on constantly. This settles on Angular a sheltered decision to depend on.

Our AngularJS Support

We have expertise in building best solutions with multiple web technologies, AngularJS is the perfect front-end framework to develop dynamic applications. Our web developers are trained on AngularJS and the have the proper understanding of the technology. For the technology to be used for developing the project, we recommend you to go for AngularJS.

Angular 4 Features introduced in 2017

Amit Khirale — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 05:06:41 +0000

Web Application development is supplying with spontaneous, interactive and clean applications with the help of extra ordinary and magical features of Angular. The angular community has included many advanced changes to angular 4 and that’s why the major version number has moved to Angular 4. The main reason behind skipping the version 3 was that the router package was in version 3.x, so instead of putting everything to 3.0 and the router to 4.0, the team chose to upgrade the versions of all the ng-modules to 4.0. Let me tell you an important news that the angular community has decided for some time-based releases occurring in three different phases:

->Angular patches will be released every week
->Few minor releases will be followed by major release
->At last, there will be a major release every 6 months

Now let’s jump into the major changes introduced in Angular 4:

Angular Universal:

Server-side rendering is the act of spitting the same HTML content in virtual DOM to the server so that they are rendered appropriately by the browser on request. This allows spiders and web robots to dig your websites and index contents when necessary.

Server-side rendering was not a thing in canonical Web Application Development until single page apps came about. Such apps use a virtual DOM concept which abstracts DOM rendering. A technique is needed to render to DOM via server requests.

The project was maintained entirely outside Angular, but from Angular 4 forward, Universal will become a core Angular module.

Type Script 2.4:

Type Script is an open source programming language created and maintained by Microsoft which is free to implement. It is super set of JavaScript which primarily provides optional static typing, classes, and interfaces. Also designed for development of large applications and trans compilers to JavaScript. Angular 4 introduced them and soon you will be able to activate the new strictNullChecks.

StrictNullChecks:

Sadly, some parts of the improved Type Checks could not be included in Angular 4 [for now] because some incompatibilities were found in the RC phase. There are plans to include this feature in v4.1, though.

Module-ID Removed:

They added a new SystemJS plugin which manually writes module is in angular 4.0, angular can take the path reference you should provide relative path is enough. It dynamically converts “component-relative” paths in template URL and style URLs to “absolute paths” for you.

Smaller & Faster Apps:

The Angular team did a great job enhancing the speed. Angular 4 applications are smaller & faster in comparison with Angular 2.It has been noticeable when doing development, but I have not been able to test much of the difference on a live server.

Animation Package:

Upgrading the Angular 2 Animations now has their own package i.e. @angular/platform-browser/animations; now import statement will look like this instead:

Import the BrowserAnimationsModule module in your app module:

Animations now have their own package i.e. @angular/platform-browser/animations.

Template ng-template:

Modify your code and change all occurrences of template

template

to

ng-template

you should use the ng-template tag instead of as caused conflicts with other usages of the tag It still works, therefore the Angular team changed it to use for Angular purposes. It will pop a warning if you use the deprecated template somewhere when you update to Angular 4, so it will be easy to spot them. It’s a breaking change; therefore they didn’t introduce this change in Angular-2 but only in Angular-4 according to semantic versioning rules.

ngIf with else:

It’s now also possible to use an else syntax in your template.

Pipes:

Angular 4 introduced a new title case pipe. It changes the first letter of each word into uppercase.

http:

Adding search parameters to an HTTP request has been simplified.

Conclusion:

A few things to watch out for:

Updating to Angular v4 could mean that some of the dependent modules will be out of sync, so you have to update them as well. Personally, the only issue I had was TypeScript which I updated to 2.2.1.

Code editors and plugins that understand the Angular template syntax will still complain about improper syntax when you use the else keyword. This is fine because your code will still work. The plugin/editor managers will make updates as soon as they can.

I guess we have covered all the major changes introduced in Angular 4. The Web Application Development using Angular 4.0 will provide more secure, flexible and scalable pathway. It really shows the Angular Teams’ commitment to making Angular best and more interactive and efficient for development.

Visit Original post 10 Major Features Introduced In Angular 4