Sagar Ganatra's Blog

I've been working on an Angular project for good number months. There's a lot that I've learned and I've realized that the code I wrote could have been structured in a better way. I wanted to write this post sometime back, however I thought it would be better to create an application structure first and then post my learnings. I have posted all the code on github here -  https://github.com/sagar-ganatra/angular-require-template . The template is still a work in progress, however the basic structure of the template is in place.

I've been working on an Angular project for sometime now and I usually run across issues when building the application. In most of the example applications that I've seen, all application script files are loaded upfront i.e. all JavaScript files are loaded when the user accesses application. I get annoyed by this approach; why should all the components be loaded upfront when the probability of user accessing the entire application is very less. How does one architect a multi-page application using Angular? What would be the size of the application after minifying all the JavaScript files. Most importantly how does one load the components lazily. I've used RequireJS in my previous projects and it allows you to load components on demand; the idea is to load components based on the selected route. I've tried a similar approach with Angular using ' resolve ' property in the $routeProvider .

I have been working on an Angular application for sometime now and I have started to like this approach to client-side development. It's a different approach when compared to developing applications using Backbone and Require. I was looking at routing in Angular and came across the 'resolve' property which can be used to resolve services before instantiating the Controller and it's corresponding template i.e. the domain models that are required for the View components are resolved first.

The title says it all. My second book titled 'Kendo UI Cookbook' was released last week. I have written over 50 recipes focusing on the Kendo UI application framework, widgets and data visualization components. Here's the link from where you can buy the book -  http://www.packtpub.com/kendo-ui-cookbook/book

I have been looking at PageJS as a Routing solution for my Backbone applications. PageJS allows you to specify multiple callback functions for a particular route and creates a context object based on the current state of the application. The context object contains valuable information that can be used in constructing View components and in triggering business work flows.

The projects that I work on have deployments to the QA very often; testing out the bug fixes and new features. Every time after the deployment, I ask the QA to clear the cache, since all JavaScript files are cached by the browser. This is really frustrating to QA and I needed someway to clear the cache with every deployment. This would be same in a continuous delivery project, wherein the client would be required to clear the browser cache.

In my last post, I mentioned about two way binding a.k.a MVVM in Backbone using Backbone.Stickit plugin . The Stickit plugin does provide awesome two way binding, but in addition it includes several features that are very much apt when modifying state of model or the view. I've been using these features in my project regularly.