First, complete book about AngularJS. Pretty good, very useful and written by our fellow man from Poland. Could I ask for more?
AngularJS is very popular JavaScript framework for writing Single Page Applications but despite its popularity, it had surprisingly poor book coverage. There were no really good, reference book covering all aspects of using Angular and covering it in a more detailed way. But thanks to “Mastering Web Application Development with AngularJS” that is no longer the case.
Overview
The book starts with gentle introduction to the framework, we have a simple Hello World application just to get a quick glance how AngularJS works. Then in later chapters we learn how to organise project (directories layout, build system), communicate with backend, get data and display data to the user, design navigation and other usual topics which are covered in every book about all web frameworks. Luckily everything is provided in an easy to understand way with a lot of useful tips and code snippets.
And when after reading this part of book I thought “Oh man, AngularJS is easy, now I get it ” I reached two chapters about directives. And trust me, if someone says “I fully understand directives from AngularJS” he either is AngularJS committer/author or a liar. I knew that directives are powerful and complex, but I wasn’t aware that they are so powerful and so complex. These two chapters are a masterpiece in taking you into world of getting as much as possible from this flagship AngularJS feature. But it is so complicated topic that I had to read these chapters twice probably only to get to “I understand it more or less” level. But at least I know that every time I need to write non-trivial directive I could grab this book as a reference and find detailed explanation of how directives work and what they are capable of.
After section about directives there are easier topics like internationalization, quick look at framework internals and very useful part describing how to detect and solve performance problems of your application.
What I liked:
- level of detail, this book is most complete reference guide to understand and leverage power of AngularJS
- best explanation of directives and their powers
- many useful tips from people using AngularJS in they daily job
- very test-oriented examples
- avoiding step-by-step tutorial approach and choosing more systematic way of introducing a framework
What I didn’t like:
- Almost nothing about various projects around AngularJS that could be helpful during development and learning
- Nothing about animations
Summary
Simply Must Have reference title for every AngularJS developer. The most advanced book about this framework on the market with plenty of practical suggestions. Very detailed but written in a way that is easy to follow. If you want to understand AngularJS and how to use if effectively, this book is a very good choice.
