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-(post
- :title "AngularJS Post-mortem"
- :date (make-date* 2013 08 08)
- :tags '("web" "javascript" "angularjs" "wsu")
- :summary "AngularJS likes/dislikes and what went right/wrong"
-
- (p [,(anchor [AngularJS] "http://angularjs.org/")
-is the new popular client-side Javascript application framework
-developed by Google.  We have recently adopted it at Vista Higher
-Learning for building our latest features that require a lot
-client-side logic.  Now that I have a few applications under my belt,
-it’s time to talk about my experience.])
-
- (p [If you want a quick TL\;DR: I think AngularJS is good, but it has
-a steep learning curve and there’s no well defined set of best
-practices.])
-
- (p [Note: I will be using plenty of terms that will probably only
-make sense for people that have used AngularJS.])
-
- (h2 [The Good Stuff])
-
- (p [These are the things that went well.  The things that made me glad
-that we chose to use AngularJS.])
-
- (h3 [Easier Testing])
-
- (p [Our Javascript test suite uses
-,(anchor [Jasmine.] "http://pivotal.github.io/jasmine/")
-AngularJS is built with test frameworks like Jasmine in mind.
-AngularJS could tends to be easily testable due to dependency
-injection.  When the components of an application don’t rely on global
-state, it is easier to mock services for unit tests.])
-
- (h3 [Separation of Concerns])
-
- (p [AngularJS stresses separating the view from the data structures
-and logic behind it.  I think everyone that’s written a somewhat
-complex JQuery application can relate to the mess of CSS selectors and
-click callbacks that the code quickly degenerates into.])
-
- (p [AngularJS allows you to break up the DOM into logical chunks that
-are handled by separate controllers. Treating the application as many
-small pieces working together rather than one giant DOM blob keeps the
-code clean. Message passing via
-,(code [$emit]) and ,(code [$broadcast])
-keeps controllers loosely coupled to each other.])
-
- (h3 [No More JQuery Spaghetti])
-
- (p [Directives, the strategy for encapsulating DOM manipulation, are
-wonderful.  It is an elegant solution to the mess that was JQuery
-selectors and event callbacks.  AngularJS comes with a lot of
-directives out of the box to handle the most common stuff like
-showing/hiding elements, handling clicks, dynamically setting CSS
-classes.])
-
- (h3 [More Maintainable Code])
-
- (p [AngularJS is feature-rich.  It does a lot on your behalf, which
-greatly reduces the amount of boilerplate code needed to get a
-prototype up and running.  I had the opportunity to essentially
-rewrite an existing JQuery application using AngularJS.  The results
-were clear: The AngularJS version had fewer lines of code, was more
-readable, and was easier to debug.])
-
- (h2 [Bumps in the Road])
-
- (p [These are the things that didn’t go smoothly.  They boil down to
-AngularJS having a steep learning curve and ill-informed software
-design decisions on my part.])
-
- (h3 [Understanding the Magic])
-
- (p [A lot of things seem to happen by magic. For example, it is
-possible to make a asynchronous request and get a promise object in
-return. When the promise is assigned to a variable on ,(code [$scope]),
-AngularJS not only knows to ignore it while the request hasn’t
-finished, but it will re-assign to that variable the value of the
-asynchronous call when it completes. It is a nice feature, but it
-takes some digging to find out what is really going on.])
-
- (h3 [Poor Documentation])
-
- (p [I know I’m not the only one that hates the official AngularJS
-documentation.  The documentation is getting more complete, but it’s
-still not very useful.  Functions frequently have a blurb describing
-what they do, but no explanation of the parameter list.  It’s hard to
-use a function that doesn’t describe what it expects for input.])
-
- (p [When the documentation confused us, which it did frequently, we
-turned to the AngularJS book from
-,(anchor [O’Reilly] "http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028055.do")
-for help.  I need to get around to reading more of it.])
-
- (h3 [RESTful Resources and Rails])
-
- (p [AngularJS claims to be targeted at CRUD applications, but using
-the HTTP backend and the ,(code [Resource]) abstraction that sits on
-top of it was particularly difficult.  A good amount of time was spent
-on trying to get the HTTP requests from resources to conform to what
-our Rails backend expects, like root-wrapping.])
-
- (h3 [Bloated Controllers])
-
- (p [I frequently made controllers that had too much state and logic
-that should have been extracted into services/factories/etc.  A
-controller would start out slim but would quickly grow to several
-hundred lines of code as features were added.  Controllers should be
-the middle man between the view and the model and that’s it.])
-
- (p [Some tell-tale signs that a controller is becoming bloated:])
-
- (ul
-  (li [There are a lot of private functions (not defined on
-,(code [$scope]))])
-  (li [Functions are defined on ,(code [$scope]) just so you can
-unit-test them, but are never used in the template]))
-
- (p [I attribute controller bloat to a lack of knowing the appropriate uses
-for other AngularJS components.  It was easy to just keep adding to the
-controller.])
-
- (h2 [Conclusion])
-
- (p [Overall, I think things went well, but I (and the rest of my
-team) made a lot of beginner mistakes. But that’s the learning
-process, isn’t it?])
-
- (p [Now that I know more about AngularJS, it will be easier to make
-better design decisions moving forward.])
-
- (p [I believe that as AngularJS continues to mature, some concensus
-in the community about best practices will emerge that will make
-things easier for beginners.]))