Learn AngularJS in 5 Steps

I’ve seen some developers quite shy about AngularJS when confronted to all the magical powers; don’t be afraid, AngularJS indeed introduces several new concepts but you can get them in just a few weeks of practice… The Google team is working hard to lower the Angular entry barrier and to make everything as simple as possible for developers.

AngularJS is a new disruptive innovation in the Javascript frameworks world and it prefigures the future of web browsers : templates, data-binding, web components…

In this post i’ll give some advices for the AngularJS newbies and share with you the best pointers to learn and understand the core concepts quickly.

First, to understand AngularJS you of course need to know a bit of Javascript. If you’re not comfortable enough yet, pick a free book on JSbooks and practice.

If you have a jQuery background, you absolutely need to read this in-depth Stack Overflow answer : How to think in AngularJS if i have a jQuery background. Just imagine the productivity boost you’ll get when you won’t need to maintain the DOM anymore :)

To sum up key features of AngularJS :

• Templates : Your templates lives right in the DOM. Forget mustache, handlebars, hogan…
• Two-way data-binding : Your javascript data automagically updates your DOM and vice-versa.
• Routing : Define routes, associate templates and controller in just a few lines.
• Forms : Many helpers to help dealing with forms, one of the worst webdevs nightmare.
• Directives : Encapsulates templates and code in reusable components easily.
• Testability : AngularJS was designed in a way your web app can be fully testable.
• Animation : Easily animate elements and views.