"Thinking in AngularJS" if I have a jQuery background?

Suppose I'm familiar with developing client-side applications in jQuery, but now I'd like to start using AngularJS. Can you describe the paradigm shift that is necessary? Here are a few questions that might help you frame an answer:

• How do I architect and design client-side web applications differently? What is the biggest difference?

• What should I stop doing/using; What should I start doing/using instead?

• Are there any server-side considerations/restrictions?

I'm not looking for a detailed comparison between jQuery and AngularJS.

1. Don't design your page, and then change it with DOM manipulations

In jQuery, you design a page, and then you make it dynamic. This is because jQuery was designed for augmentation and has grown incredibly from that simple premise.

But in AngularJS, you must start from the ground up with your architecture in mind. Instead of starting by thinking "I have this piece of the DOM and I want to make it do X", you have to start with what you want to accomplish, then go about designing your application, and then finally go about designing your view.

1. Don't augment jQuery with AngularJS

Similarly, don't start with the idea that jQuery does X, Y, and Z, so I'll just add AngularJS on top of that for models and controllers. This is really tempting when you're just starting out, which is why I always recommend that new AngularJS developers don't use jQuery at all, at least until they get used to doing things the "Angular Way".

I've seen many developers here and on the mailing list create these elaborate solutions with jQuery plugins of 150 or 200 lines of code that they then glue into AngularJS with a collection of callbacks and $applys that are confusing and convoluted; but they eventually get it working! The problem is that in most cases that jQuery plugin could be rewritten in AngularJS in a fraction of the code, where suddenly everything becomes comprehensible and straightforward.

The bottom line is this: when solutioning, first "think in AngularJS"; if you can't think of a solution, ask the community; if after all of that there is no easy solution, then feel free to reach for the jQuery. But don't let jQuery become a crutch or you'll never master AngularJS.

1. Always think in terms of architecture

First know that single-page applications are applications. They're not webpages. So we need to think like a server-side developer in addition to thinking like a client-side developer. We have to think about how to divide our application into individual, extensible, testable components.

So then how do you do that? How do you "think in AngularJS"? Here are some general principles, contrasted with jQuery.

The view is the "official record"

In jQuery, we programmatically change the view. We could have a dropdown menu defined as a ul like so:



Home


-
Menu 1

• Submenu 1

• Submenu 2

• Submenu 3

-
Menu 2




In jQuery, in our application logic, we would activate it with something like:

$('.main-menu').dropdownMenu();


When we just look at the view, it's not immediately obvious that there is any functionality here. For small applications, that's fine. But for non-trivial applications, things quickly get confusing and hard to maintain.

In AngularJS, though, the view is the official record of view-based functionality. Our ul declaration would look like this instead:


...



These two do the same thing, but in the AngularJS version anyone looking at the template knows what's supposed to happen. Whenever a new member of the development team comes on board, she can look at this and then know that there is a directive called dropdownMenu operating on it; she doesn't need to intuit the right answer or sift through any code. The view told us what was supposed to happen. Much cleaner.

Developers new to AngularJS often ask a question like: how do I find all links of a specific kind and add a directive onto them. The developer is always flabbergasted when we reply: you don't. But the reason you don't do that is that this is like half-jQuery, half-AngularJS, and no good. The problem here is that the developer is trying to "do jQuery" in the context of AngularJS. That's never going to work well. The view is the official record. Outside of a directive (more on this below), you never, ever, never change the DOM. And directives are applied in the view, so intent is clear.

Remember: don't design, and then mark up. You must architect, and then design.

Data binding

This is by far one of the most awesome features of AngularJS and cuts out a lot of the need to do the kinds of DOM manipulations I mentioned in the previous section. AngularJS will automatically update your view so you don't have to! In jQuery, we respond to events and then update content. Something like:

$.ajax({
url: '/myEndpoint.json',
success: function ( data, status ) {
$('ul#log').append('

• Data Received!');

}
});


For a view that looks like this:





Apart from mixing concerns, we also have the same problems of signifying intent that I mentioned before. But more importantly, we had to manually reference and update a DOM node. And if we want to delete a log entry, we have to code against the DOM for that too. How do we test the logic apart from the DOM? And what if we want to change the presentation?

This a little messy and a trifle frail. But in AngularJS, we can do this:

`$http( '/myEndpoint.json' ).then( functi

Stack Overflow Q#14994391, score: 7156