Angular

Free Angular Training during JavaScript Marathon with This Dot Labs

Published Mar 26, 2020

Updated Feb 14, 2023

4 min read

This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may be relevant but please refer to the relevant official documentation or available resources for the latest information.

Now that we're all working from home, This Dot Labs has something planned to keep you tied up - online Angular training!

In celebration of our new remote, corporate training offerings, This Dot invites you to enjoy six weeks of free, live Angular courses!

This is just one of the five weekly sessions we're hosting on topics, including Vue, React, RxJS, and Web Performance!

You can sign up for other courses and find the full schedule at JavaScriptMarathon.com.

Enjoy 6 free Angular courses, given LIVE every Wednesday the entire month of April! Sign up below.

April 1, 2020: 1 Hour to Learn Angular

This is an introduction to Angular. We will walk through what the Angular CLI is, and how it can help us. We’ll explore a newly created Angular application, as well as data binding (interpolation, attribute vs property bindings, class bindings), and components using input and outputs. We will introduce a service to fetch async data as well as a custom pipe to render data differently from the underlying model. We will do this using the Angular CLI to show the participants how much is done for them. Last but not least, we will add some custom CSS to ensure everything looks as pretty as possible.

April 8, 2020: The Best Pro Tips for A11Y in Angular

In this training you’ll learn how to make your Angular applications more accessible. We’ll teach you what NOT to do, and provide you with some best practice tips on what to do to ensure accessibility compliance.

April 15, 2020: Master PWA in Angular

In this training, you will learn how easy it is to convert your Angular application into a PWA with just one command. We’ll also dive into the files generated by the Angular CLI that make your application a PWA, and help you better understand what Angular is doing under the hood.

April, 22, 2020: Advanced NgRx: Complex Angular State Management

State management libraries like NgRx can be simple to learn, but difficult to master. Managed correctly, NgRx can be a powerful tool for isolating complexity and separating concerns, greatly speeding up development, and reducing errors. However, when applied incorrectly, NgRx can overwhelm your team and actually worsen errors. Luckily, there are a handful of tips that can help you, and your team, reach state management bliss. In this training, we’ll discuss event-based actions, event storming, how to write more resilient effects, how to determine what data belongs in your store, how to build more maintainable selectors and components, and how to identify when your team is heading down the wrong path. NOTE: This training expects that attendees already know the basics of the NgRx architecture (selectors, reducers, actions, and effects)

April 29, 2020: Easy Angular Unit Testing in NgRx

NgRx is awesome, but testing can be a complex job. We’ll cover some of the common patterns to test NgRx’s reducers, selectors, effects as well as components that are using those selectors and actions. We will also cover a bit of marble testing as well to help you along in your testing journey.

May 6, 2020: A Guide to Advanced Angular Patterns (Route Guards, Pipes, Interceptors, and more)

It’s easy to write websites and applications in Angular using mostly basic components, services, and the built-in Angular tools (such as pipes). But, there’s a lot more you can do in Angular to build your own utilities, and extend the Angular platform! In this training, we’ll learn how to take full advantage of the Angular platform. We’ll explain and build sample route guards, pipes, interceptors, and directives. Along the way, we’ll call out some common pitfalls that trip up teams as they start to build their own utilities.

You can RSVP to attend any of these amazing events, hosted by talented team members at This Dot Labs, by clicking on the hyperlinks above! If you have any questions, or want to learn more about the JavaScript Marathon series, visit javascriptmarathon.com, or email us at hi@thisdot.co.

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

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This Dot

Angular Signals for Simpler State Management and DOM Performance

In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, host Rob Ocel is joined by Adam Rackis, Danny Thompson, and guest Braydon Coyer, Senior Front-End Developer at LogicGate to talk about using Angular Signals for improved state management and DOM performance. Braydon explains how Signals simplify Angular development and offer better readability and efficiency compared to traditional methods like RxJS. The conversation also touches on hiring in the AI era, discussing challenges around take-home tests and live coding, and how AI tools like ChatGPT are changing the interview process. Chapters - 00:00 - Introduction - 00:57 - The Angular Renaissance - 02:24 - Signals in Angular - 03:27 - Transitioning to Signals - 04:19 - Signals in Utility Development - 05:09 - RxJS and Signals - 07:52 - Signals vs Other State Management Solutions - 09:34 - Testing Signals - 10:29 - Control Flow and Standalone Components in Angular - 12:02 - Angular's Evolution and Accessibility - 13:28 - Angular’s Framework Governance - 17:10 - Hiring in the Age of AI - 19:15 - Pair Programming and Real-Time Problem Solving - 22:24 - The Role of AI in Interviews - 27:58 - Wrapping Up Follow Braydon Coyer Twitter: https://x.com/BraydonCoyer Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/braydon-coyer/ Github: https://github.com/braydoncoyer...

Oct 30, 2024

1 min

Angular

Introduction to Zod for Data Validation

As web developers, we're often working with data from external sources like APIs we don't control or user inputs submitted to our backends. We can't always rely on this data to take the form we expect, and we can encounter unexpected errors when it deviates from expectations. But with the Zod library, we can define what our data ought to look like and parse the incoming data against those defined schemas. This lets us work with that data confidently, or to quickly throw an error when it isn't correct. Why use Zod? TypeScript is great for letting us define the shape of our data in our code. It helps us write more correct code the first time around by warning us if we are doing something we shouldn't. But TypeScript can't do everything for us. For example, we can define a variable as a string or a number, but we can't say "a string that starts with user_id_ and is 20 characters long" or "an integer between 1 and 5". There are limits to how much TypeScript can narrow down our data for us. Also, TypeScript is a tool for us developers. When we compile our code, our types are not available to the vanilla JavaScript. JavaScript can't validate that the data we actually use in our code matches what we thought we'd get when we wrote our TypeScript types unless you're willing to manually write code to perform those checks. This is where we can reach for a tool like Zod. With Zod, we can write data schemas. These schemas, in the simplest scenarios, look very much like TypeScript types. But we can do more with Zod than we can with TypeScript alone. Zod schemas let us create additional rules for data parsing and validation. A 20-character string that starts with user_id_? It's z.string().startsWith('user_id_').length(20). An integer between 1 and 5 inclusive? It's z.number().int().gte(1).lte(5). Zod's primitives give us many extra functions to be more specific about *exactly* what data we expect. Unlike TypeScript, Zod schemas aren't removed on compilation to JavaScript—we still have access to them! If our app receives some data, we can verify that it matches the expected shape by passing it to your Zod schema's parse function. You'll either get back your data in exactly the shape you defined in your schema, or Zod will give you an error to tell you what was wrong. Zod schemas aren't a replacement for TypeScript; rather, they are an excellent complement. Once we've defined our Zod schema, it's simple to derive a TypeScript type from it and to use that type as we normally would. But when we really need to be sure our data conforms to the schema, we can always parse the data with our schema for that extra confidence. Defining Data Schemas Zod schemas are the variables that define our expectations for the shape of our data, validate those expectations, and transform the data if necessary to match our desired shape. It's easy to start with simple schemas, and to add complexity as required. Zod provides different functions that represent data structures and related validation options, which can be combined to create larger schemas. In many cases, you'll probably be building a schema for a data object with properties of some primitive type. For example, here's a schema that would validate a JavaScript object representing an order for a pizza: ` Zod provides a number of primitives for defining schemas that line up with JavaScript primitives: string, number, bigint, boolean, date, symbol, undefined, and null. It also includes primitives void, any, unknown, and never for additional typing information. In addition to basic primitives, Zod can define object, array, and other native data structure schemas, as well as schemas for data structures not natively part of JavaScript like tuple and enum. The documentation contains considerable detail on the available data structures and how to use them. Parsing and Validating Data with Schemas With Zod schemas, you're not only telling your program what data should look like; you're also creating the tools to easily verify that the incoming data matches the schema definitions. This is where Zod really shines, as it greatly simplifies the process of validating data like user inputs or third party API responses. Let's say you're writing a website form to register new users. At a minimum, you'll need to make sure the new user's email address is a valid email address. For a password, we'll ask for something at least 8 characters long and including one letter, one number, and one special character. (Yes, this is not really the best way to write strong passwords; but for the sake of showing off how Zod works, we're going with it.) We'll also ask the user to confirm their password by typing it twice. First, let's create a Zod schema to model these inputs: ` So far, this schema is pretty basic. It's only making sure that whatever the user types as an email is an email, and it's checking that the password is at least 8 characters long. But it is *not* checking if password and confirmPassword match, nor checking for the complexity requirements. Let's enhance our schema to fix that! ` By adding refine with a custom validation function, we have been able to verify that the passwords match. If they don't, parsing will give us an error to let us know that the data was invalid. We can also chain refine functions to add checks for our password complexity rules: ` Here we've chained multiple refine functions. You could alternatively use superRefine, which gives you even more fine grained control. Now that we've built out our schema and added refinements for extra validation, we can parse some user inputs. Let's see two test cases: one that's bound to fail, and one that will succeed. ` There are two main ways we can use our schema to validate our data: parse and safeParse. The main difference is that parse will throw an error if validation fails, while safeParse will return an object with a success property of either true or false, and either a data property with your parsed data or an error property with the details of a ZodError explaining why the parsing failed. In the case of our example data, userInput2 will parse just fine and return the data for you to use. But userInput1 will create a ZodError listing all of the ways it has failed validation. ` ` We can use these error messages to communicate to the user how they need to fix their form inputs if validation fails. Each error in the list describes the validation failure and gives us a human readable message to go with it. You'll notice that the validation errors for checking for a valid email and for checking password length have a lot of details, but we've got three items at the end of the error list that don't really tell us anything useful: just a custom error of Invalid input. The first is from our refine checking if the passwords match, and the second two are from our refine functions checking for password complexity (numbers and special characters). Let's modify our refine functions so that these errors are useful! We'll add our own error parameters to customize the message we get back and the path to the data that failed validation. ` Now, our error messages from failures in refine are informative! You can figure out which form fields aren't validating from the path, and then display the messages next to form fields to let the user know how to remedy the error. ` By giving our refine checks a custom path and message, we can make better use of the returned errors. In this case, we can highlight specific problem form fields for the user and give them the message about what is wrong. Integrating with TypeScript Integrating Zod with TypeScript is very easy. Using z.infer<typeof YourSchema> will allow you to avoid writing extra TypeScript types that merely reflect the intent of your Zod schemas. You can create a type from any Zod schema like so: ` Using a TypeScript type derived from a Zod schema does *not* give you any extra level of data validation at the type level beyond what TypeScript is capable of. If you create a type from z.string.min(3).max(20), the TypeScript type will still just be string. And when compiled to JavaScript, even that will be gone! That's why you still need to use parse/safeParse on incoming data to validate it before proceeding as if it really does match your requirements. A common pattern with inferring types from Zod schemas is to use the same name for both. Because the schema is a variable, there's no name conflict if the type uses the same name. However, I find that this can lead to confusing situations when trying to import one or the other—my personal preference is to name the Zod schema with Schema at the end to make it clear which is which. Conclusion Zod is an excellent tool for easily and confidently asserting that the data you're working with is exactly the sort of data you were expecting. It gives us the ability to assert at runtime that we've got what we wanted, and allows us to then craft strategies to handle what happens if that data is wrong. Combined with the ability to infer TypeScript types from Zod schemas, it lets us write and run more reliable code with greater confidence....

Nov 15, 2024

7 mins

JavaScriptZod

Announcing July JavaScript Marathon - Free, online training!

Join us July 22nd, 2020 for our next JavaScript Marathon! JavaScript Marathon is a full day of free, online courses on Angular, React, Vue, RxJS, and Web Performance. Come learn about some of the leading web development technologies, and concepts! Stay for one training, or stick around for the whole day! No two sessions will be the same! --- Featuring Shawn Wang @ 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT In this session we will learn how to build a fullstack serverless React + GraphQL app from scratch with authentication, storage, and multiplayer realtime collaboration, all atop infinitely scalable AWS components, with AWS Amplify! It's never been this easy to go from idea to prototype, and each piece will be livecoded in front of your very eyes! --- Featuring Michael Hladky @ 12:30pm - 1:30pm EDT The async pipe is boring! Understand the guts of Angulars change detection and why zone.js is your biggest enemy. Learn the tricks on template bindings, component rendering, and where you pay the biggest price. As a cutting edge demo, you will understand how to analyze blocking UIs over flame charts and how to avoid them. In the end, you will be able to get zone-less performance even in zone-full Angular applications! --- Featuring Nathan Walker @ 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT During this introduction to Nativescript, you’ll get a brief overview of what Nativescript is and how it works. You’ll also learn how to create a TypeScript, Angular, Vue, and React based app, + so much more! --- Featuring Cecelia Martinez @ 3:30pm - 4:30pm EDT Looking to add testing to your skill set or just feel more confident pushing to production? In this beginner-level talk, we will walk through the process of installing, configuring, and writing a critical-path test using Cypress. Written in JavaScript and built on the popular Mocha and Chai libraries, the free and open-source Cypress Test Runner gets you up to speed with end-to-end testing fast. We will also cover general testing strategies for beginners, including how to decide what to test and how to ensure your test suite is effective. --- Featuring Jesse Tomchak @ 5:00pm - 6:00pm EDT Setting up user authorization and authentication can be a minefield of security practices, token verification, valid callback urls, salt hashes, and more. Now take all those struggles and sprinkle them over serverless functions! When all we want to do is get past the login page to our actual application. We'll walk through setting up secure oAuth with AWS Lambda functions, covering common pitfalls, so that you can get back to the fun part of your project. --- Tune in next month for another full day of JavaScript Marathon! Need private trainings for your company? If you would like to learn more about how you can leverage This Dot’s expertise to upskill your team, and reinvigorate your developers with new knowledge about the web’s leading development technologies, visit the trainings page....

Jul 8, 2020

4 mins

EnterpriseGeneralJavaScriptTraining

AI Leadership: Data-Driven Decision Making & Avoiding "Analysis Paralysis" with Jerry Reghunadh

In this episode of Leadership Exchange, host Rob Ocel chats with Jerry Reghunadh, Senior Director of Enterprise Architecture at Data Nimbus, about leadership, AI adoption, and data-driven decision-making. Jerry shares his career journey, insights on leveraging tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, and strategies for building effective data pipelines. They explore how companies can avoid "analysis paralysis," adopt AI strategically, and evaluate new technologies to solve real-world problems. Tune in for practical advice on aligning innovation with business goals and staying competitive in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. Chapters 00:00 – Introduction 00:31 – Jerry’s Leadership Journey 02:01 – Discussing AI in Leadership 03:59 – Experimenting with AI Tools 06:24 – Overcoming Analysis Paralysis 09:18 – Importance of Early AI Adoption 13:12 – AI’s Impact on Efficiency 14:30 – Sponsor Message 16:26 – Setting Realistic Goals for AI 19:41 – Data Management and AI 23:09 – Is AI Just a Fad? 27:22 – Testing New Technologies 29:56 – Final Thoughts on AI 30:25 – Connect with Jerry 30:44 – Closing Remarks 31:20 – Outro Follow Jerry on Social Media Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrymannel/ Sponsored by This Dot: thisdot.co...

Nov 18, 2024

1 min

AIEngineering Leadership

Let's innovate together!

We're ready to be your trusted technical partners in your digital innovation journey.

Whether it's modernization or custom software solutions, our team of experts can guide you through best practices and how to build scalable, performant software that lasts.

Free Angular Training during JavaScript Marathon with This Dot Labs

This Dot

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