DarksideCookie

In the previous post, we looked at how we can use Gulp to run tasks for us. And in that post we used it to create tasks for transpiling LESS and TypeScript into CSS and JavaScript. But the example was very small and simple. It only contained 1 LESS file and 1 JavaScript file. But what if we have more than 1? Well, that’s when we need to start bundling the files together, and potentially minify them so that they are faster to download. Luckily, this is a piece of cake to do using Gulp. So in this post, we will have a look at how to do that, as well as how to get some TypeScript/JavaScript tests thrown in there as well.

Dislaimer: The solution will still be VERY small and simple. But at least it will be made big enough to be able to use bundling and minification. Which to be honest just means that we need more than one file of each type…

I assume that you have read the last post, and that if you are following along on your machine, you will need to be done with everything that was done in that post…

More...

I started building web-based software professionally around year 2000, just before the big IT crash in Sweden. It started out being just hacing together HTML, mostly using tables, and a little JavaScript. But slowly evolved into building ASP applications with VB Script and COM-components in VB. Since then, I have been in and out of the webdevelopment scene a whole bunch of times, and very little has changed. It is still HTML/CSS/JavaScript over HTTP…

Yes, on server-side there have been some changes. First an abstraction into WebForms, and then back to MVC. And to me, ASP.NET MVC is pretty similar to classical ASP in many ways. But the front end has pretty much stayed the same. It is still good ol’ HTML and JavaScript…and CSS of course. However, having been away from it for a little while now, coming back I realize that the scene has changed. A lot… Yes, the languages are unfortunately the same, but the methods have changed a lot.

The thing that has changed the most is that we are using MUCH more JavaScript and CSS. MUCH more. And that creates new requirements. Requirements like bundling and minifying, as well as testing even our front-end code. And in a lot of cases, we are authoring our code in other languages and have them “compiled”, or “transpiled”, into JavaScript and CSS, to make up for their “shortcomings”. Whether it be using CoffeScript or Dart for you JavaScript, or LESS or SASS for your CSS, it needs processing before we can use it… And this new way of building things has created the need for a front-end build pipeline… At least if you want to be really productive.

More...

In the last part, we went had a thorough look at scopes, and scope “inheritance”. That means that we have now covered setting up Angular, creating modules and controllers, and how to utilize two-way data binding using the scope object. The next step is to learn how to work with dependency injection in Angular to provide the same dependency injected service structure that Angular uses internally.

Dependency injection isn’t complicated as such, you register a service that another unit of code can request to get access to. That is the extremely simple definition. To support this in Angular we depend on the $provide service. This service is used to locate dependencies that other pieces of code require. Unfortunately, something as simple as this, actually becomes a little complicated and hard to grasp in Angular. Not because it is really complicated, but because there are so many options…

More...

In the previous part, I talked fairly detailed about how the scopes use prototypical inheritance, and how we can use this to our advantage by either using simple property types, or by using complex types.

In this part, I want to cover some functionality given to us by Angular when using the scope…

More...

In the last part, we talked about how to set up to group different bits and pieces of a solution into units. We also talked about how to create controllers inside those modules. We briefly looked at creating a controller and using it to work with the scope object, and how, by using data binding, could update the UI in a more structured way.

In this part, we will take a deeper look into using controllers and scope. Mostly about how to use the scope to be honest. Controllers are all about functionality, while scope is about data binding. As I don’t have a special solution to build, there isn’t going to be a whole lot of functionality. There will be just enough functionality to show the stuff I am talking about…

More...

In the previous part, I covered how to get started with Angular, as well as the basics of how it works “internally”. This part will build on that knowledge, and add modules and controllers to the mix.

If you haven’t read the previous part, I suggest at least skimming through it. The first part might not be necessary to understand this part, but the basics covered in the previous will be…

To start off, we need a clean “solution”, containing only an index.htm file, and Angular… The index.htm file should look something like this

More...

Ok, if you have read my first post in this series about getting started with AngularJS, you will know what AngularJS is, as well as why I am creating yet another introduction to it. In this part, I want to focus on getting started. The first baby steps in the road to building SPAs with Angular.

The first step is to set up a new application. In this case, let’s keep it ridiculously simple. It doesn’t have to be a big complicated solution and use big IDEs like Visual Studio. At least not in the beginning. IDEs have their place, but for now, adding a simple folder on the computer is enough to get started. This folder will be the “solution”. And Notepad will be the editor.

You are obviously more than welcome to use another editor. Notepad is in no way the only editor that was built with Angular in mind. But it, or very similar editors, are pre-installed on most development computers in the world.

More...

AngularJS is honestly one of the best things I have stumbled upon in years. After Silverlight doing its fantastic disappearing act, my interest in developing things on the web took a nosedive. I had no interest in doing it what so ever. HTML/CSS/JavaScript was a massive step back from XAML in my mind. And I still think so. I think we are trying to do things on the web using technologies that weren’t built for it, ending up with a lot of hacky solutions…

However, when I found AngularJS and realized that I could use my MVVM experience, and my “XAML patterns” on the web, it changed a whole lot! I could focus on building applications and leave a lot of the hackyness to the side. I would still have to do the hacks, working with HTML and CSS, but at least I could build the logic side of things in a structured way.

However, Angular might not be the easiest thing to just pick up and learn. For web developers, picking up dependency injection and MVVM can be a daunting task, and being a .NET developer, taking up a dynamic language like JavaScript, and loosely strung together applications built on spread out text files, might seem less the perfect.

Angular isn’t overly complicated, and there are a million resources for learning it out there. But for some reason, I haven’t found one that suited me. So…I decided to do what all simpletons do…we re-invent the wheel and do it all ourselves… The goal is to write an introduction to Angular from my point of view, which means from the point of view of a person who normally works with C# building ASP.NET MVC applications as well as XAML-based applications. I have a background in building web applications, but more from a ASP.NET side of things than from a client-side.

More...