Angular - Tutorial Part - 2 Languages Editor "Tour of languages"

The Languages Editor

The application now has a basic title. Next you will create a new component to display language information and place that component in the application shell.

Create the languages component

Using the Angular CLI, generate a new component named languages.

ng generate component languages

The CLI creates a new folder, src/app/languages/ and generates the three files of the LanguagesComponent.

The LangaugesComponent class file is as follows:

app/languages/languages.component.ts (initial version)

import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';

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

  constructor() { }

  ngOnInit() {
  }

}

You always import the Component symbol from the Angular core library and annotate the component class with @Component.

@Component is a decorator function that specifies the Angular metadata for the component.

The CLI generated three metadata properties:

1. selector— the component's CSS element selector
2. templateUrl— the location of the component's template file.
3. styleUrls— the location of the component's private CSS styles.

The CSS element selector, 'app-languages', matches the name of the HTML element that identifies this component within a parent component's template.

The ngOnInit is a lifecycle hook Angular calls ngOnInit shortly after creating a component. It's a good place to put initialization logic.

Always export the component class so you can import it elsewhere ... like in the AppModule.

Add a language property

Add a language property to the LanguagesComponent for a language named "C Sharp."

languages.component.ts (language property)

language = 'C Sharp';

Show the language

Open the languages.component.html template file. Delete the default text generated by the Angular CLI and replace it with a data binding to the new language property.

languages.component.html

{{language}}

Show the LanguagesComponent view

To display the LanguagesComponent, you must add it to the template of the shell AppComponent.

Remember that app-languages is the element selector for the LanguagesComponent. So add an <app-heroes> element to the AppComponent template file, just below the title.

src/app/app.component.html

<h1>{{title}}</h1>
<app-languages></app-languages>

Assuming that the CLI ng serve command is still running, the browser should refresh and display both the application title and the language name.

Create a Language class

Create a Language class in its own file in the src/app folder. Give it id and name properties.

src/app/language.ts

export class Language {
  id: number;
  name: string;
}

Return to the LanguagesComponent class and import the Language class.

Refactor the component's language property to be of type Language . Initialize it with an id of 1 and the name C Sharp.

The revised LanguagesComponent class file should look like this:

src/app/heroes/languages.component.ts

import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';
import { Language } from '../language';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-languages',
  templateUrl: './heroes.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./heroes.component.css']
})
export class Languagesomponent implements OnInit {
  language: Language = {
    id: 1,
    name: 'C Sharp'
  };

  constructor() { }

  ngOnInit() {
  }

}

The page no longer displays properly because you changed the language from a string to an object.

Show the language object

Update the binding in the template to announce the language's name and show both id and name in a details layout like this:

languages.component.html (LanguagesComponent's template)

<h2>{{ language.name }} Details</h2>
<div><span>id: </span>{{language.id}}</div>
<div><span>name: </span>{{language.name}}</div>

The browser refreshes and display's the language's information.

Format with the UppercasePipe

Modify the language.name binding like this.

<h2>{{ language.name | uppercase }} Details</h2>

The browser refreshes and now the language's name is displayed in capital letters.

The word uppercase in the interpolation binding, right after the pipe operator ( | ), activates the built-in UppercasePipe.

Pipes are a good way to format strings, currency amounts, dates and other display data. Angular ships with several built-in pipes and you can create your own.

Edit the language

Users should be able to edit the language name in an <input> textbox.

The textbox should both display the language's name property and update that property as the user types. That means data flow from the component class out to the screen and from the screen back to the class.

To automate that data flow, setup a two-way data binding between the <input> form element and the language.name property.

Two-way binding

Refactor the details area in the LanguagesComponent template so it looks like this:

src/app/languages/languages.component.html (LanguagesComponent's template)

<div>
    <label>name:
      <input [(ngModel)]="languages.name" placeholder="name">
    </label>
</div>

[(ngModel)] is Angular's two-way data binding syntax.

Here it binds the language.name property to the HTML textbox so that data can flow in both directions: from the language.name property to the textbox, and from the textbox back to the language.name.

The missing FormsModule

Notice that the app stopped working when you added [(ngModel)].

To see the error, open the browser development tools and look in the console for a message like

Template parse errors:
Can't bind to 'ngModel' since it isn't a known property of 'input'.

Although ngModel is a valid Angular directive, it isn't available by default.

It belongs to the optional FormsModule and you must opt-in to using it.

AppModule

Angular needs to know how the pieces of your application fit together and what other files and libraries the app requires. This information is called metadata

Some of the metadata is in the @Component decorators that you added to your component classes. Other critical metadata is in @NgModule decorators.

The most important @NgModule decorator annotates the top-level AppModule class.

The Angular CLI generated an AppModule class in src/app/app.module.ts when it created the project. This is where you opt-in to the FormsModule.

Import FormsModule

Open AppModule (app.module.ts) and import the FormsModule symbol from the @angular/forms library.

app.module.ts (FormsModule symbol import)

import { FormsModule } from '@angular/forms'; // <-- NgModel lives here

Then add FormsModule to the @NgModule metadata's imports array, which contains a list of external modules that the app needs.

app.module.ts ( @NgModule imports)

imports: [
  BrowserModule,
  FormsModule
],

When the browser refreshes, the app should work again. You can edit the language's name and see the changes reflected immediately in the <h2> above the textbox.

Declare LanguagesComponent

Every component must be declared in exactly one NgModule.

You didn't declare the LanguagesComponent. So why did the application work?

It worked because the Angular CLI declared LanguagesComponent in the AppModule when it generated that component.

Open src/app/app.module.ts and find LanguagesComponent imported near the top.

import { LanguagesComponent } from './languages/languages.component';

The LanguagesComponentis declared in the @NgModule.declarations array.

declarations: [
  AppComponent,
  LanguagesComponent
],

Note that AppModule declares both application components, AppComponent and LanguagesComponent.

Summary

• You used the CLI to create a second LanguagesComponent.
• You displayed the LanguagesComponent by adding it to the AppComponent shell.
• You applied the UppercasePipe to format the name.
• You used two-way data binding with the ngModel directive.
• You learned about the AppModule.
• You imported the FormsModule in the AppModule so that Angular would recognize and apply the ngModeldirective.
• You learned the importance of declaring components in the AppModule and appreciated that the CLI declared it for you.