AngularJS : Introduction, History, Single Page Application

AngularJS Intoduction :

AngularJS is an open-source web application framework, maintained by Google and community that assist with creating Single Page Applications. The main goal behind AngularJS is web applications with Model–View–Controller (MVC) capability, in an effort to make both development and testing easier. It can be used to build dynamic as well as client-centric web applications.

History of AngularJS :

AngularJS was originally developed in 2009 by Miško Hevery and Adam Abrons at Brat Tech LLC as the software behind an online JSON storage service that would have been priced by the megabyte, for easy-to-make applications for the enterprise.

Latter on Abrons left the project, but Hevery who works at Google, continues to develop and maintain the library with fellow Google employees Igor Minár and Vojta Jína.

"Miško Hevery" is the "Father of AngularJS".

AngularJS is a client-side JavaScript application framework or web application framework that lets you to extend HTML vocabulary for creating single page web applications.

What is Single Page Application?

A single-page application (SPA), also known as single-page interface (SPI), is a web application or web site that fits on a single web page with the goal of providing a more fluid user experience. These single page web applications include significant client side web programming languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. In single page application, additional content of page will be loaded when needed in single page instead of going pages to pages. It is faster because your site will load only the content it needs.

Interaction with the single page application often involves dynamic communication with the web server behind the scenes. So, web page never reloads at any point in the process, nor transfer control to another page. Only on user actions appropriate resources are dynamically loaded and added to the page as necessary. Although modern web technologies such as those included in HTML5 can provide the perception and navigability to separate logical pages in the application.

Some characteristics of the professional Single Page Application :

• Chunking :- The web page is constructed by loading chunks of HTML fragments and JSON data instead of receiving full HTML from a web server on every request.

This characteristic can be found in JavaScript libraries/frameworks like Backbone.js, pjax, jQuery, Upshot.js etc.

• Controllers :- JavaScript code that handles complex DOM, data manipulations, application logic and AJAX calls is replaced by controllers that separate views and models using MVC or MVVM patterns.

This characteristic can be found in JavaScript libraries/frameworks like Backbone.js, Knockout.js, JavaScriptMVC etc.

• Templating :- Coding of UI and DOM manipulations are replaced by declarative binding of data to HTML templates.

This characteristic can be found in JavaScript libraries/frameworks like Knockout.js, Mustache, jQuery Templates, Underscore.js etc.

• Routing :- Selection of Views and Navigation (without page reloads) that preserves page state, elements and data.

This characteristic can be found in JavaScript libraries/frameworks like History.js, Crossroads.js, Backbone.js, pjax, HTML5 History API etc.

• Real-time Communication :- Two-way Communication of a client application and web server replaces one-way requests from a browser.

This characteristic can be found in JavaScript libraries/frameworks like HTML5 Web Sockets, Socket.io, SignalR etc.

• Local storage :- Capabilities of Storing Data on a browser for performance and offline access replace cookies and intensive data loads from web server.

This characteristic can be found in JavaScript libraries/frameworks like HTML5 Local storage etc.

Conclusion :

I hope that this article would have helped you in Introducing AngularJS, history of AngularJS as well as about Single Page Applications. Please share your knowledge if you know more about this attribute. Your feedback and constructive contributions are always welcome.