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Building a Site

Bootstrap

  • One of the most useful tools for front end design is Bootstrap. It can be installed with: npm install bootstrap jquery popper.js
  • The file Angular.json contains where to find certain elements of the application, such as the Bootstrap file.
  • For example:
			...
            "assets": [
              "src/favicon.ico",
              "src/assets"
            ],
            "styles": [
              "src/styles.css",
              "node_modules/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css"
            ],
            "scripts": [
              "node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js",
              "node_modules/popper.js/dist/umd/popper.min.js",
              "node_modules/bootstrap/dist/js/bootstrap.min.js"
            ]
          },
		  ...

This would apply the css in styles.css to and node modules every page in the application

Routing Basics

  • In app.module.ts:
const routes: Routes = [
  // The extension of the URL, and what component or action should be loaded
  { path : 'admin/users', component : UsersComponent }
];

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent,
    MenuComponent,
    CalendarComponent,
    RoomsComponent,
    UsersComponent
  ],
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
	// It is nessecary to add this module with the routes
	// It never changes, cerimonial code.
    RouterModule.forRoot(routes)
  ],
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule { }

Then in app.component.html:

<div class="container">
  <app-menu></app-menu>
  <router-outlet></router-outlet>
</div>

router-outlet will be replaced with whatever component it finds in the router module with the given URL

  • The wild card symbol in routing is **. So to set up a 404 page use:
// Note: It's usaully production standard to put these in a seperate file
// called app.routing.module.ts
const routes = [
  { path : '', component : `HomeComponent },
  { path : '404', component : PageNotFoundComponent },
  { path : "**", redirectTo : '/404' }
];

The wild card must always come at the end

  • The problem with the above is that the links perform a GET request on the server, reloading the entire Angular application every time.
    • Angular is intended to be a single page application
  • Solution: Remove all href tags that link to a server and replace them with a click event function.
    • This requires the use of the Routing package from @angular/routing, and is added to the constructor In the menu.html:
  ...
  <a class="dropdown-item" (click)="navigateToRoomsAdmin()">Rooms</a>
  ...

In the menu.component.ts class:

@Component({
  selector: 'app-menu',
  templateUrl: './menu.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./menu.component.css']
})
export class MenuComponent implements OnInit {

  constructor(private router: Router) { }

  ngOnInit(): void {
  }

  navigateToRoomsAdmin() {
    // navigate to /admin/rooms
    this.router.navigate(['admin','rooms']);
  }

}

Routing for Sub-Components

  • To have a url that changes within an application we use yet another library named ActiveRouting
  rooms: Array<Room>;
  selectedRoom: Room;

  constructor(private dataService: DataService, 
  private route: ActivatedRoute) { }

  ngOnInit(): void {
    this.rooms = this.dataService.rooms;
    // inspect the URL to see if there is a parameter on the path
    this.route.queryParams.subscribe((params) => {
      const id = params['id'];
      if (id) {
        // cast a variable to a number using +
        this.selectedRoom = this.rooms.find( room => room.id === +id);
      }
    })
  }

Models and Views

  • If we want to store data so users can see it later, it must be connected to a backend
    • Spring, ExpressJS, RubyOnRails, etc.
  • When the data arrives from the backend (the Observable) we create an event to contain it in an array.
  • For the above reason we use getters and setters of type Observable
  private rooms: Array<Room>;
  private users: Array<User>;

  getRooms(): Observable<Array<Room>> {
    return of(this.rooms);
  }

  getUsers(): Observable<Array<User>> {
    return of(this.users);
  }

Then in the ngInit function we subscribe to that event

  ngOnInit(): void {
    this.dataService.getRooms().subscribe(next => this.rooms = next );
	}

Pipes

Pipes allow us to change the way something is displayed, such as a date

selectedDate = new Date();

<p>The selected date is {{selectedDate | date:'yyyy-MM-dd'}}</p>

Check out some other pipe usages in the documentation

The alternative to the above would be

ngOnInit(): void {
  const date: string = formatDate(this.selectedDate, 'yyyy-MM-dd', 'en-US');
}

You could also specify the locale this way. But pipes are a pretty cool feature of Angular.

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