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Using AngularJS at Localytics

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Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#31

Post by xaritas »

swah wrote: post #10

We used to write things like Then we realized it was bad to couple presentation and behavior, so we made our Javascript unobtrusive, keeping our templates clean. But now we’re back at it again, writing . Have we learned nothing? --- This seems like a good point that I can't refute - anyone?

There is an immense amount of guilt and shame concerning the subject of markup and JavaScript living together. It may help if you rationalize it this way.

The second one not HTML at all, rather it is written in an XML-like configuration language which declaratively specifies the structure of the view, in which the attributes use Angular's JavaScript-like expression DSL to declaratively specify how its elements are bound to the behaviors available on whatever controller has been injected into this template. This allows you (or a non-coding designer) to completely change up the connections, appearance or structure of the view while touching no JavaScript whatsoever.

So in this case the markup and the behavior can be intimate, without actually coupling; thus there is no need for anxiety.

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#32

Post by aidos »

swah wrote: post #10

We used to write things like Then we realized it was bad to couple presentation and behavior, so we made our Javascript unobtrusive, keeping our templates clean. But now we’re back at it again, writing . Have we learned nothing? --- This seems like a good point that I can't refute - anyone?

This is a choice you can make in angular - you can do it the other way if you want. It's totally up to you.

We're building webapps - there's going to be behaviour attached to dom nodes. You could use a class instead but in my experience you end up in a worse place. When people do it as classes (or data attributes / whatever else) someone is going to come along and wire styles to those. You'll just end up with a much more twisted coupling of behaviour and presentation. I've unpicked this mess more times than I care to think about right now.

Also, it's really different in Angular - the behaviour is not as coupled. Each element has its own scope - the old "bad" way was wiring up html elements to GLOBAL scope. That's obviously not great.

Edit: so I don't sound so snarky.

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#33

Post by marknutter »

swah wrote: post #10

We used to write things like Then we realized it was bad to couple presentation and behavior, so we made our Javascript unobtrusive, keeping our templates clean. But now we’re back at it again, writing . Have we learned nothing? --- This seems like a good point that I can't refute - anyone?

My best attempt:

HTML already has a bunch of behaviors embedded in it. Links, styles, dropdown menus, input fields, radio boxes, etc. The angular devs are simply embracing the declarative nature of HTML and extending its available behaviors. In that respect, angular is actually treating HTML more like it was intended to be treated.

And I agree with the OP's lamentations about the javascript being completely divorced from the HTML. You end up with code that is so decoupled it's a major undertaking for someone new to your project to figure out what's going on. In an angular.js app, all they need do is look at the HTML and they can get a good idea what's supposed to be happening and where.

edit: And the truth is, jQuery apps aren't polluting the HTML any more than Angular apps, they're just doing it in the form of additional CSS classes and IDs and "data" attributes. In that respect, you could say that jQuery pollutes the css declarations.

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#34

Post by dpnewman »

swah wrote: post #10

We used to write things like Then we realized it was bad to couple presentation and behavior, so we made our Javascript unobtrusive, keeping our templates clean. But now we’re back at it again, writing . Have we learned nothing? --- This seems like a good point that I can't refute - anyone?

Strongly suggest looking beyond this if your concern about Angular is that it is returning us to an old approach. Angular, on the contrary, in my experience, is a broadly conceived vision of how to rethink and move browser development significantly forward. I have been waiting for something like this. The key part of that ng-click is that it's an Angular 'directive'. I recommend adding AngularJs to your app to do a simple experiment of writing a few directives of your own; see if that doesn't light a bulb.

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#35

Post by lukeasrodgers »

Nice, thorough write-up. For people considering Backbone, though, I will say that I've written several non-trivial Backbone apps, and negotiating the form view re-rendering problem is not that difficult and certainly does not require an extra data binding library. Also I've had no problem integrating the Chose plugin into Backbone apps.

Dealing with deeply nested views can still be a bit of a headache, but I prefer the extra control over view rendering that I get with Backbone vs. soem other frameworks (I have no experience with Angular).

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#36

Post by nicklovescode »

lennel wrote: post #30
znt wrote: post #4

I decided to use AngularJS on a side project of mine, after considering Backbone and EmberJS. I am not a JS expert, but I am pretty sure AngularJS will be an industry standard in a few years.

I think as mobile becomes more dominant angular will have to find a way to work tighter with the closure compiler in advanced mode (or something akin) to remain relevant.

why?

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#37

Post by ihsw »

swah wrote: post #10

We used to write things like Then we realized it was bad to couple presentation and behavior, so we made our Javascript unobtrusive, keeping our templates clean. But now we’re back at it again, writing . Have we learned nothing? --- This seems like a good point that I can't refute - anyone?

The alternative is a slew of loosely-coupled and opaque attributes (IDs and classes), especially where you're not sure if a particular class or ID is used for presentation (CSS) or functionality (JS). How do you handle refactoring when you use some classes for JS and some for CSS?

With custom attributes there is no confusion, and although it goes completely against the separation of concerns and now your mark-up isn't completely declarative -- it's a necessary drawback.

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#38

Post by marknutter »

My angular story:

My team was at a similar crossroads a few months back when trying to decide which javascript framework to pick for our mobile app. It came down to Backbone, Angular, and CanJS (because we had previously used JavascriptMVC on a project). It really came down to Backbone vs. Angular and we were leaning heavily towards Backbone. We all built demos using each of the three frameworks.

I was the Angular advocate and after having experienced incredible joy creating my demo I was desperate to get the rest of the team on board. After much debate we were leaning towards backbone, until that is, I asked "how would you go about making sure your views are updated and your forms validated". After we walked through the work that would be needed to be done maintaining the view state in real-time on a backbone app, and a few other examples like retrieval of form data or validation of forms, it became clear we'd need to write a lot more DOM manipulation glue-code using Backbone than we would with Angular.

In the end, this was what pushed us over to the Angular side. The focus on testing and the dependency injection throughout was another huge selling point for us. And frankly, it wasn't clear to us how a Backbone app should be structured. In fact, that variability appeared to be one of the main selling points of the framework but it ended up paralyzing us with choice. Being first time Backbone developers we weren't sure we could ever feel confident knowing we were following best practices.

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#39

Post by feniv »

I've been using AngularJS for a few months on a side project of mine and it greatly helped move a lot of the code complexity to the client side. Hooking it up with a REST API was simple and got rid of almost all of the server side rendering.

Here's a particularly useful sample app, implemented in both Angular as well as Backbone.

http://coenraets.org/blog/2012/02/sample-application-with-an...

Re: Using AngularJS at Localytics

#40

Post by camus »

i dont know, built this with angular : http://markme.alwaysdata.net

it works , i like the DI stuff though i always used my little lib for that before( https://github.com/Mparaiso/Pimple.js ) .the 'dirty checking' always felt like a hack , i'm glad Google is working on it with Object.observe. as for the code inside the html, since it is a "scoped" eval with its own dsl it's fine.

But i still use backbone especially for games and non dom related apps.

what matters is choice , and angular is still light weight compared to beasts like Sencha.

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