Angular Basics: Best Practices for Creating New Angular Components

This guide covers what you need to know to create effective Angular components to improve the maintainability and scalability of your app.

Angular is a powerful framework for building web applications, and one of its key features is the ability to create reusable components. However, creating new Angular components can be challenging, especially for those who are new to the framework. With so many options and techniques to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start.

In this blog, we will be discussing the best practices for creating new Angular components. From naming conventions and component structure to reusability, accessibility, performance and testing, we’ll cover everything you need to know to create high-quality, reusable components that are optimized for performance and accessibility.

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, this guide will provide you with the knowledge and tools to create effective Angular components that will improve the maintainability and scalability of your application. So, let’s get started!

Naming Conventions

When creating new Angular components, it’s important to use a consistent naming convention to make it easy to understand the purpose of each component and how it relates to other components in the application. Here are some best practices for naming conventions:

• Use a predictable and consistent naming scheme: A consistent naming scheme makes it easier to understand the purpose and structure of the components in your application. For example, using “kebab-case” (e.g., my-component) for components and “camelCase” (e.g., myComponent) for services and other classes.
• Use descriptive names: Descriptive names make it clear what a component does and how it is used. Avoid using generic or abbreviated names that could be ambiguous.
• Use a prefix for custom components: To distinguish custom components from built-in components, it’s a good practice to use a prefix, such as “app-” or “my-”.
• Use consistent naming across the application: When naming components, it’s important to be consistent across the entire application. This makes it easier to understand the structure of the application and reduces the likelihood of naming conflicts.
• Avoid using reserved words: Some words are reserved in JavaScript and TypeScript and cannot be used as variable or function names. Be sure to avoid these words when naming your components.

By following these best practices, you can ensure that your components have clear, consistent and descriptive names that make it easy to understand the structure and purpose of your application.

Reusability

When creating new Angular components, it is important to make them as reusable as possible. Some best practices for achieving this include:

• Keep the component simple and focused on a specific task or functionality.
• Use inputs and outputs for component communication and data binding.
• Use dependency injection to inject services or other dependencies into the component.
• Use a consistent naming convention for component selectors and inputs/outputs.
• Use Angular’s lifecycle hooks to control the component’s behavior at different stages of its lifecycle.
• Use Angular’s built-in directives and pipes to add functionality to the component.
• Test the component thoroughly to ensure it works as intended and can be reused in different contexts.
• Document the component’s usage and any necessary configuration options.
• Consider using a component library or creating a shared module to make it easier to reuse the component across different parts of the application.
• Continuously refactor and improve the component to make it more reusable over time.

By following these best practices, you can create components that are easy to understand, maintain and reuse in different parts of your application.

Single Responsibility Principle

The Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) is a best practice for creating new Angular components. It states that a component should have one, and only one, specific and well-defined purpose, and all of its functionality should be related to that purpose.

By following the SRP, developers can create more maintainable and scalable code, as each component has a clear and limited scope of responsibility. This makes it easier to understand, test and modify the component, as well as reuse it in different parts of the application.

Communication Between Components

Communication between components in Angular refers to the process of passing data or information from one component to another component. This allows different parts of an application to share data and interact with each other and you can also make changes to one component without affecting the rest of the application.

There are several ways to achieve communication between components in Angular:

• Property binding: This allows data to be passed from a parent component to a child component. The child component receives the data through an input property.
• Event binding: This allows data to be passed from a child component to a parent component. The child component raises an event, which the parent component listens for and handles.
• Services: A shared service can be used to pass data between components. The service can be injected into multiple components, allowing them to share the same data.
• ngrx/store: Angular’s centralized store solution, allows for efficient and organized data management by storing the state of the application and dispatching actions, which can be listened to by the component and updated accordingly.
• @Input() and @Output() decorators: These allow for the use of property and event binding respectively.

Each of these methods has its own specific use cases and trade-offs, and the choice of which one to use depends on the specific requirements of the application.

State Management

When building new components in Angular, it’s important to think about how to manage their state. A good way to do this is by using a centralized store, such as NgRx. This makes it easy to keep track of the data and state of your application. It’s also a good idea to use functional programming concepts like immutability and pure functions.

Another best practice is to make sure your components are small and focused on one specific task. You can use the @Input() and @Output() decorators to pass data between components. This helps to make the components more reusable and keeps them focused on one specific task. By following these best practices, you can make sure your Angular components are well-organized, easy to understand and straightforward to maintain.

Testing

When building new Angular components, it’s crucial to make sure they work properly. One way to do this is to run tests on each component and service separately, so you can confirm everything is functioning correctly. Additionally, it’s a smart idea to run tests on the entire application to make sure all the components work together seamlessly.

Another good approach is to use Test-Driven Development (TDD) when creating new components. With TDD, you first write tests for a feature before you even write the feature. This way, you make sure that the code you’re writing is testable and that you’re thinking about all possible scenarios and edge cases.

It’s also essential to use mock objects to imitate the behavior of other components and services that the component being tested depends on. This way you can test the component in isolation and guarantee that it’s working as expected.

By following these best practices for testing, you can ensure that your new Angular components are functioning correctly and that any bugs or issues are identified and dealt with early on in the development process.

Final Words

We hope you enjoyed our post about new Angular components. They are one of the best ways to improve the organization of your code and make it easier to share. We encourage you to design your Angular components carefully so that they are as easy as possible to reuse.

Save time and hassle when creating Angular components: Start with the professionally designed, accessibility-compliant component library from Kendo UI for Angular.