Angular

New Features in Angular 14 - Standalone APIs, Animations, SSR Support, Typed Forms, TypeScript 4.7 and more

Published Jun 29, 2022

Updated Feb 16, 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This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date.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.

The release of Angular 14 was just announced on June 2, 2022, and offers many exciting new features including Typed Forms, Standalone Components, Typescript 4.7 support, and more.

Here’s a first look at some of the new features.

Standalone APIs

The Standalone Pipes, Directives, and Components feature (Standalone PDC) is still in the preview stage, and is subject to change in the near future. However, it is now ready to be used in production applications.

The Standalone APIs make NgModule optional for Components, Directives, and Pipes. Developers can use the new load Component #45705 to lazyLoad a route for a Standalone component without the need to implement NgModule.

Developers can also implement dependencies and providers directly into the component #45673.

Some of the benefits of Standalone PDC include:

Less boilerplate code. Implementing a Component, Pipes, or a Directive will only require the actual code for the feature without the need to add NgModules. Easier to learn for new developers, as it will require only the process that implements the features.
Less code in a project means a smaller bundle size for deployment.
Ability to independently lazy load a single component.
Ability to independently add NgModules and functionalities to a component, directive, or pipes.

GitHub Link to feature implementation #45687 #45672

Typed Forms

Strongly-typed forms are a popular request by the community #13721. With Angular 14, the new Form API provides type-safe and null-safe form controls and form values. It ensures that the values inside of form controls, groups, and arrays are type-safe. #43834

nonNullable Form Controls

With typed-forms, form controls are null by default, and can be reset to null. The FormBuilder.nonNullable allows a provided default value to form reset. When calling formControl.reset() form controls will be reset to the default value. #45852

Configurable Document Page Title

Angular 14 provides a new service for setting the document page title. With this, developers can provide configuration for page Title using the new Router.title property in Angular Router, allowing a developer to implement a page title without the need to import title.

const routes: Routes = [{ path: 'home', component: HomeComponent title: 'My App - Home' // <-- Page title }, { path: 'about', component: AboutComponent, title: 'My App - About Me' // <-- Page title }];

#43307

Specifying Providers for a Route

Inspired by the Angular 14’s Standalone PDC, the ability to lazyLoad a component, or add an independent NgModule to the component, allows developers to specify Providers for a Route without having to add it to an NgModule. Instead, they can add it directly to a component. #45673

Node and Typescript Versions support

Angular 14 only supports Node 14> #45286 and Typescript 4.6> #45394. Any technologies behind these versions are not supported.

Angular Animation

With Angular 14, developers now get a warning when trying to animate a non-animatable CSS property. #45212

Creating UrlTree from Routes

With Angular v14.1, developers can create a UrlTree from any ActivatedRouteSnapshot. A UrlTree is a data structure that provides a lot of ways to deal with URLs like accessing URL fragments, query params, and more. The previous Router APIs only support creating UrlTrees from an ActivatedRoute.

The benefits of this function can be observed when the developer only needs URL information of a component at a particular state. #45877

Standalone API support for SSR

Angular 14 exposes new functionality. renderApplication, which is similar to renderModule, is used for Angular server-side rendering to allow application bootstrapping. This accepts a standalone component instead of a root NgModule. #457850

New Angular CLI Commands

ng cache

Angular CLI's new command ng cache can be used to check and control the disk cache settings. This accesses the existing configuration in ng config. #22851

ng completion

Making typos with ng commands happens to a lot of us. With the new ng completion, developers can enable the real-time type-ahead autocomplete feature of Angular CLI. This command generates a script that developers can copy and paste into .bashrc, .bash_profile, .zshrc or .zsh_profile. #22967

To learn more about Features, fixes, and deprecates of Angular API, visit the official ChangeLog Doc.

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About the author(s)

Hassan Sani
@inidaname @inidaname

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

Exploring Angular Forms: A New Alternative with Signals

Exploring Angular Forms: A New Alternative with Signals In the world of Angular, forms are essential for user interaction, whether you're crafting a simple login page or a more complex user profile interface. Angular traditionally offers two primary approaches: template-driven forms and reactive forms. In my previous series on Angular Reactive Forms, I explored how to harness reactive forms' power to manage complex logic, create dynamic forms, and build custom form controls. A new tool for managing reactivity - signals - has been introduced in version 16 of Angular and has been the focus of Angular maintainers ever since, becoming stable with version 17. Signals allow you to handle state changes declaratively, offering an exciting alternative that combines the simplicity of template-driven forms with the robust reactivity of reactive forms. This article will examine how signals can add reactivity to both simple and complex forms in Angular. Recap: Angular Forms Approaches Before diving into the topic of enhancing template-driven forms with signals, let’s quickly recap Angular's traditional forms approaches: 1. Template-Driven Forms: Defined directly in the HTML template using directives like ngModel, these forms are easy to set up and are ideal for simple forms. However, they may not provide the fine-grained control required for more complex scenarios. Here's a minimal example of a template-driven form: ` ` 2. Reactive Forms: Managed programmatically in the component class using Angular's FormGroup, FormControl, and FormArray classes; reactive forms offer granular control over form state and validation. This approach is well-suited for complex forms, as my previous articles on Angular Reactive Forms discussed. And here's a minimal example of a reactive form: ` ` Introducing Signals as a New Way to Handle Form Reactivity With the release of Angular 16, signals have emerged as a new way to manage reactivity. Signals provide a declarative approach to state management, making your code more predictable and easier to understand. When applied to forms, signals can enhance the simplicity of template-driven forms while offering the reactivity and control typically associated with reactive forms. Let’s explore how signals can be used in both simple and complex form scenarios. Example 1: A Simple Template-Driven Form with Signals Consider a basic login form. Typically, this would be implemented using template-driven forms like this: ` ` This approach works well for simple forms, but by introducing signals, we can keep the simplicity while adding reactive capabilities: ` ` In this example, the form fields are defined as signals, allowing for reactive updates whenever the form state changes. The formValue signal provides a computed value that reflects the current state of the form. This approach offers a more declarative way to manage form state and reactivity, combining the simplicity of template-driven forms with the power of signals. You may be tempted to define the form directly as an object inside a signal. While such an approach may seem more concise, typing into the individual fields does not dispatch reactivity updates, which is usually a deal breaker. Here’s an example StackBlitz with a component suffering from such an issue: Therefore, if you'd like to react to changes in the form fields, it's better to define each field as a separate signal. By defining each form field as a separate signal, you ensure that changes to individual fields trigger reactivity updates correctly. Example 2: A Complex Form with Signals You may see little benefit in using signals for simple forms like the login form above, but they truly shine when handling more complex forms. Let's explore a more intricate scenario - a user profile form that includes fields like firstName, lastName, email, phoneNumbers, and address. The phoneNumbers field is dynamic, allowing users to add or remove phone numbers as needed. Here's how this form might be defined using signals: ` > Notice that the phoneNumbers field is defined as a signal of an array of signals. This structure allows us to track changes to individual phone numbers and update the form state reactively. The addPhoneNumber and removePhoneNumber methods update the phoneNumbers signal array, triggering reactivity updates in the form. ` > In the template, we use the phoneNumbers signal array to dynamically render the phone number input fields. The addPhoneNumber and removePhoneNumber methods allow users to reactively add or remove phone numbers, updating the form state. Notice the usage of the track function, which is necessary to ensure that the ngFor directive tracks changes to the phoneNumbers array correctly. Here's a StackBlitz demo of the complex form example for you to play around with: Validating Forms with Signals Validation is critical to any form, ensuring that user input meets the required criteria before submission. With signals, validation can be handled in a reactive and declarative manner. In the complex form example above, we've implemented a computed signal called formValid, which checks whether all fields meet specific validation criteria. The validation logic can easily be customized to accommodate different rules, such as checking for valid email formats or ensuring that all required fields are filled out. Using signals for validation allows you to create more maintainable and testable code, as the validation rules are clearly defined and react automatically to changes in form fields. It can even be abstracted into a separate utility to make it reusable across different forms. In the complex form example, the formValid signal ensures that all required fields are filled and validates the email and phone numbers format. This approach to validation is a bit simple and needs to be better connected to the actual form fields. While it will work for many use cases, in some cases, you might want to wait until explicit "signal forms" support is added to Angular. Tim Deschryver started implementing some abstractions around signal forms, including validation and wrote an article about it. Let's see if something like this will be added to Angular in the future. Why Use Signals in Angular Forms? The adoption of signals in Angular provides a powerful new way to manage form state and reactivity. Signals offer a flexible, declarative approach that can simplify complex form handling by combining the strengths of template-driven forms and reactive forms. Here are some key benefits of using signals in Angular forms: 1. Declarative State Management: Signals allow you to define form fields and computed values declaratively, making your code more predictable and easier to understand. 2. Reactivity: Signals provide reactive updates to form fields, ensuring that changes to the form state trigger reactivity updates automatically. 3. Granular Control: Signals allow you to define form fields at a granular level, enabling fine-grained control over form state and validation. 4. Dynamic Forms: Signals can be used to create dynamic forms with fields that can be added or removed dynamically, providing a flexible way to handle complex form scenarios. 5. Simplicity: Signals can offer a simpler, more concise way to manage form states than traditional reactive forms, making building and maintaining complex forms easier. Conclusion In my previous articles, we explored the powerful features of Angular reactive forms, from dynamic form construction to custom form controls. With the introduction of signals, Angular developers have a new tool that merges the simplicity of template-driven forms with the reactivity of reactive forms. While many use cases warrant Reactive Forms, signals provide a fresh, powerful alternative for managing form state in Angular applications requiring a more straightforward, declarative approach. As Angular continues to evolve, experimenting with these new features will help you build more maintainable, performant applications. Happy coding!...

Oct 4, 2024

5 mins

AngularJavaScript

How to Build Apps with Great Startup Performance Using Qwik

In this article, we will recap the JS Drops Qwik workshop with Misko Hevery. This workshop provided an overview on Qwik, its unique features and a look at some example components. We will also address some of the questions raised at the end of the workshop. If you want to learn more about Qwik with Misko Hevery, then please check out this presentation on This Dot Media’s YouTube Channel. Also don’t forget to subscribe to get the latest on all things web development. Table of Contents - What is Qwik? - How to create a Counter Component in Qwik - Unique features of Qwik - Directory Based Routing - Slots in Qwik - Very little JavaScript in production - Resumability with Qwik - Lazy load components by default - Questions asked during the workshop - Are all these functions generated at build time or are they generated at runtime? What's the server consideration here (if any) or are we able to put everything behind a CDN? - How do you access elements in Qwik? - Can you force a download of something out of view? - What is the choice to use $ on Qwik declarations? - Can you explain the interop story with web components and Qwik? Any parts of the Qwik magic that aren’t available to us if, say, our web components are too complex? - Is there an ideal use case for Qwik? - When to use useWatch$ instead of useClientEffect$? - Conclusion What is Qwik? Qwik is a web framework that builds fast web applications with consistent performance at scale regardless of size or complexity. To get started with Qwik, run the following command: ` The Qwik CLI will prompt options to scaffold a starter project on your local machine. To start the demo application, run npm start and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5173/ in the browser. How to create a Counter Component in Qwik Create a sub-directory in the routes directory named counter and add an index.tsx file with the component definition below. ` Now navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5173/counter and you should see the counter component rendered on the page. Unique features of Qwik Directory Based Routing Qwik is a directory-based routing framework. When we initiated Qwik, it created a routes sub-directory in the src directory and added index and layout files for route matching. The index.tsx is the base route component and the layout.tsx is the component for handling the base page layout. The sub-directories in the route directory serve as the application’s structure for route matching with its index.tsx files as the route components. Every index.tsx file does a look up for the layout component. If it doesn’t exist in the same directory, then it moves up to the parent directory. ` Slots in Qwik Qwik uses slots as a way of connecting content from the parent component to the child projection. The parent component uses the q:slot attribute to identify the source of the projection and the element to identify the destination of the projection. To learn more about slots, please check out the Qwik documentation. Very little JavaScript in production In production, Qwik starts the application with no JavaScript at startup, which makes the startup performance really fast. To see this in action, open the browser’s dev tools, click on the Network tab, and on the Filter tab select JS. You will notice the Vite files for hot module reloading are currently the only JavaScript files served which will not be shipped to production. Go to the filter tab and check the invert checkbox then in the filter input type select Vite. Resumability with Qwik Qwik applications do not require hydration to resume an application on the client. To see this in action, click on the increment button and observe the browser’s dev tools network tab. You will notice Qwik is downloading only the required amount of JavaScript needed. The way Qwik attaches the event to the DOM and handles the state of components is that it serializes the attribute, which tells the browser where to download the event handler and its state. To learn more about serialization with Qwik, read through the Qwik documentation. By default, the code associated with the click event will not download until the user triggers that event. On this interaction, Qwik will only download the minimum code for the event handler to work. To learn more about Qwik events, please read through the [documentation] (https://qwik.builder.io/docs/components/events/#events)....

Dec 9, 2022

5 mins

JavaScriptQwik

Building a Stripe App: A Step-by-Step Guide to QR Code Generation

Building a Stripe App: A Step-by-Step Guide to QR Code Generation Why Build a Stripe App? I recently participated in an audio space with the Stripe team, and something they said really stuck with me: the Stripe app store is a growing area that isn't overly saturated yet. There's a lot of potential for new apps, and companies can use this opportunity to grow. I work at a company called This Dot Labs, and we've created several Stripe apps and even own one. After looking at the data, I can confirm that the Stripe team was right! Creating a QR Code Generator App For this tutorial, we'll build a QR code app that can take a URL and generate a code for it. This is a good use case to help you understand the ins and outs of Stripe's developer tools. Why QR Codes? QR codes are useful tools that have become common in e-commerce, restaurants, and other industries. While Stripe already has a QR code tool, we'll make our own to familiarize ourselves with their syntax and problem-solving approaches. Project Structure Before we dive into the implementation, let's look at the structure of our Stripe App QR Code project: * .vscode: Contains settings for Visual Studio Code * source/views: Holds the main application views * .gitignore: Specifies files to ignore in version control * stripe-app.json: Defines the Stripe app configuration * ui-extensions.d.ts: TypeScript declaration file for UI extensions * .build: this is where the built Stripe app gets placed. Step-by-Step Implementation 1\. Install Stripe Locally First, you need to install Stripe on your local machine. The documentation provides great instructions for this: * For Mac users: Use Brew to install * For Windows users: Download the package and add it to your environment variables You can find the details here in the stripe docs to install the Stripe CLI https://docs.stripe.com/stripe-cli When using Windows, you must do stripe login from Powershell, NOT from Git bash or any other tool. After the server is up, then you can continue using git bash for everything else. After stripe login, you need to enter stripe apps start. Once you do that, the server is up and running and you can go back to using git bash or any other tool. 2\. Install Dependencies We'll be using an extra package for QR code generation. Install it using npm: ` 3\. Set Up the Main Component Let's look at the home.tsx file, where we'll use Stripe's UI components: ` These components are similar to other UI libraries like Bootstrap or Tailwind CSS. 4\. Create the UI Structure Our app will have: * An input field for the URL * Validation using a regex pattern * Error handling for invalid URLs * QR code generation and display Here is the Home.tsx file that is located in the src/views folder ` * ContextView` is at the top level of the app where we see the Title and the link to the Stripe Docs that we placed in our Context View. * Box is how you use Divs. * Banners can be used to show notification errors or any other item you wish to display. * Textfields are input fields. * Everything else is pretty self-explanatory. 5\. Handle Content Security Policy One problem I personally ran into was when I tried to redirect users, the Stripe policies would block it since I did not express that I knew what it was doing. I had to go into the stripe-app.json file and mention the specific security policies. For this particular exercise, I kept these as null. This is my stripe-app.json file. ` 6\. Configure App Views As you can see here, the stripe-app.json file shows the views for each file I have. The Home.tsx file and the Invoice.tsx are also included This is our way of saying that for each view we have, show the app functionality on that page. Our stripe-app.json file will show it but also, the manifest.js file in our .build folder will also show the same. Any view that doesn't have a file will not show the application's functionality. So, if I were to go to transactions, the app would not show the same logic as the home or invoices page. By following these steps, you'll have a fully functional QR code generator app for Stripe. This is just a simple example, but the potential for Stripe apps is massive, especially for businesses serving e-commerce customers. If you need help or get stuck, don't hesitate to reach out, danny.thompson@thisdot.co. The Stripe team is also very active in answering questions, so leverage them as a resource. Happy coding!...

Dec 18, 2024

4 mins

stripe

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New Features in Angular 14 - Standalone APIs, Animations, SSR Support, Typed Forms, TypeScript 4.7 and more

New Angular CLI Commands

Hassan Sani

You might also like

Introduction to Zod for Data Validation

Exploring Angular Forms: A New Alternative with Signals

How to Build Apps with Great Startup Performance Using Qwik

Building a Stripe App: A Step-by-Step Guide to QR Code Generation

Let's innovate together!

You might also like

Introduction to Zod for Data Validation

Exploring Angular Forms: A New Alternative with Signals

How to Build Apps with Great Startup Performance Using Qwik

Building a Stripe App: A Step-by-Step Guide to QR Code Generation