The document discusses the authors' experience with various JavaScript frameworks for building web applications, including jQuery, Knockout, and Kendo UI. It then provides an overview of how they are now using AngularJS and ASP.Net Web API/Node for routing, communicating with servers via services like $http and $resource, using views and directives, and managing data with scopes. Benefits are listed like abstraction, reusability, and semantic HTML support, while dislikes note complexity, lack of opinionation, steep learning curve, and difficulty debugging. The authors ask if AngularJS should be used for a new project based on being able to learn it and whether to wait for Angular 2.0.

1. A Real World Case Study
David Carter and Matt Tester

2. A bit of history…
• jQuery – lots of fun but things got pretty messy in the end
• Knockout – fantastic at first but still didn’t solve a lot of our issues
• Kendo UI – fell for what promised to be a great framework but really never
delivered
• Now, AngularJS and Asp.Net Web API / Node
MVC

3. Overview

4. Routing & View Composition
• Don’t use the default router
• Angular ui-router – state engine
• Ideally every view/state in your app should be reachable via a URL
• Nice place to put authorization in your app
• Pages can easily be composed of multiple views and controllers
• Allows you to instantiate data before view is rendered

6. Customer Page States
customers
customer/{id}
customer/{id}/
details
customer/{id}}/
contacts
customer/{id}/
correspondence
customer/{id}/
reports
customers/add

7. Communicating with the Server
• $http – low level service for http communications
• Better - $Resource - supports action methods: get, save, query, remove,
delete
• Best – RestAngular
 Great for working with a RESTful API
 Returns promises – perfect for ui-router
 Supports self-linking elements
 Supports nested RESTful resources

8. Views & Directives
• Makes HTML readable
• Great for abstraction
• Great for use with layout frameworks, e.g. Bootstrap
• Complicated, should not be taken lightly!

9. Scope

10. Likes
• It covers all the bases (routing, dependency injection, MVVM, etc)
• Feels like we don’t have to roll anything ourselves
• Good code re-use with directives
• Semantic HTML
• Good community
• Good docs and resources
• Don’t have to write a lot of code

11. Dislikes
• Feels way to complicated in places (scope & directives)
• Not opinionated enough, lots of ways to do things (e.g. factory vs service)
• Steep learning curve (take that into account)
• Can tend to hide mistakes
• Can be difficult to debug
• Lack of 3rd party components

12. Should YOU use it for your next
project?
• Can you factor in plenty of time for the learning curve?
• Can you wait for Angular 2.0 to come out?