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Marouane CHOURI
Marouane CHOURI

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What's New in Angular 18? 

title: "What's New in Angular 18?"
tags: [Angular, Web Development, JavaScript, Frontend, Frameworks]
description: "Explore the latest features and improvements in Angular 18! Discover how these changes can enhance your development experience."
cover_image: "https://example.com/path-to-your-image.jpg"
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What's New in Angular 18?

The Angular team continuously evolves the framework to ensure that developers have the tools necessary for modern web application development. With the release of Angular 18, we’ve witnessed numerous enhancements that improve performance, simplify development workflows, and introduce exciting new features. In this blog post, we will explore the most significant updates in Angular 18, showcasing their implications for your projects.

Improved Performance with Standalone Components

One of the standout features introduced in Angular 17 was the support for standalone components, and Angular 18 builds upon this foundation, making the framework even more streamlined. Standalone components enable developers to create components without the need for a dedicated Angular module, leading to simpler code management.

Benefits of Standalone Components

  • Reduced Complexity: Fewer files and boilerplate code simplify the application structure.
  • Improved Bundle Size: Only the necessary components are included in the final bundle, improving load times.

Here’s how you can define a standalone component in Angular 18:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-my-standalone',
  standalone: true,
  template: '<h1>Hello from Standalone Component!</h1>',
})
export class MyStandaloneComponent {}
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Now, you can directly include MyStandaloneComponent in your application without creating a separate module.

New Signals for Reactive Programming

Angular 18 introduces a new concept known as 'Signals', which provides a state management approach without the overhead of a dedicated state management library. Signals allow developers to create reactive data sources that automatically trigger UI updates when data changes.

Implementing Signals

To demonstrate signals, consider a simple counter example:

import { signal } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-counter',
  template: `
    <h1>Counter: {{ count() }}</h1>
    <button (click)="increment()">Increment</button>
  `,
})
export class CounterComponent {
  count = signal(0);

  increment() {
    this.count.set(this.count() + 1);
  }
}
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With signals, the count works as a reactive variable, automatically updating the UI whenever its value changes, thus simplifying state management and improving performance.

Enhanced Routing Features

Routing is a crucial element of any Angular application, and Angular 18 brings enhanced features to make routing even more powerful. These features include improved route resolvers and the ability to create lazy-loaded routes much more intuitively.

Lazy Loading with Route Resolvers

With the new lazy loading capabilities, loading routes becomes more straightforward. Here’s an improved way to configure lazy-loaded routes with resolvers:

const routes: Routes = [
  {
    path: 'feature',
    loadChildren: () => import('./feature/feature.module').then(m => m.FeatureModule),
    resolve: { data: FeatureResolver },
  },
];
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The FeatureResolver will be executed when the feature route is activated, ensuring that all necessary data is loaded before the route is displayed.

Improved Developer Experience with Enhanced Tooling

Angular 18 brings a plethora of updates to its development tools, enhancing the overall developer experience. The Angular CLI now includes improved schematics and better integration with modern development environments.

Example of New Schematics

The CLI can now generate standalone components, making it easy for developers to adopt this approach without manual setup:

ng generate component my-standalone --standalone
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This command creates a standalone component with the necessary boilerplate, significantly speeding up development workflows.

Typescript 5.x Support

With Angular 18, you’ll find that the framework is fully optimized for TypeScript 5.x. This means better tooling and type inference, which can enhance your development experience significantly.

Leveraging Type Inference

TypeScript 5.x introduces improvements in type inference, which enables developers to work more intuitively. For example:

const greet = (name: string) => `Hello, ${name}!`;
const message = greet('Angular Developer');
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The editor can now infer types better, reducing the need for extensive type annotations and making code cleaner and easier to maintain.

Conclusion

Angular 18 has landed with exciting new features that empower developers to build scalable and maintainable web applications efficiently. From the introduction of standalone components and signals to improved routing and enhanced tooling, these updates are designed to streamline the development process.

If you haven’t upgraded to Angular 18 yet, now is the perfect time to explore these new features and determine how they can enhance your current and future projects.

Call to Action: Have you tried out the new features in Angular 18? What are your thoughts? Share your experiences in the comments below, and let’s dive deeper into the Angular ecosystem together!

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