Naming convention for angular module dependencies - javascript

I just started learning AngularJS and got chance to look different angular examples. I have a question regarding angular.module dependencies. How can we know the name of dependencies to be used and from where (or which directory) angular inject those dependencies ?
for example
var clientApp = angular.module('clientApp', ['ui.bootstrap', 'hljs', 'common', 'smart-table',
'bootstrap.fileField', 'toaster', 'ngAnimate', 'angulartics', 'angulartics.google.analytics']);
in the above clientApp they have used nine dependencies. I am confused on the names used for injecting those dependencies like ui.bootstrap,hljs etc. Is there any standard convention for those names ? Also how angular fetch the required modules from lib folder ? This is my directory structure
+---js
¦ appctrl.js
+---lib
+---components
+---angular
¦ angular.js
¦ angular.min.js
+---angular-animate
¦ angular-animate.js
¦ angular-animate.min.js
+---angular-bootstrap
¦ ui-bootstrap-tpls.js
¦ ui-bootstrap-tpls.min.js
¦ ui-bootstrap.js
¦ ui-bootstrap.min.js
The clientApp will get all the modules without fail. I wonder how it can access these directory without specifying.

The injection of module dependencies depends on your code. Either one or more dependencies are injected based on the need of a code. If you are redirecting between pages using angular 'ngRoute' will be injected. If you are injecting 'ngRoute', you must specify "angular-route.js" in the script header. Another example is ngAnimate. This is used when an animation is required. This shall be used when a menu appears or disappears to make the transition smooth. The angular-animate.js should be added.
The ui-bootstrap is list of bootstrap components developed in angular. If you intend to use any of the directives in the following URL, you will inject the ui-bootstrap. https://angular-ui.github.io/bootstrap/
Toaster is a third part library. The another common one is gridster.
There are hundreds modules that can be injected into angular modules. Do inject only the modules that are used in the code as explained above. You must add related js files to your HTML script section. If you do not add the js script, angular code will not understand the injection.
Do let me know if you expect more details

The dependencies you are injecting to the module are named the same way your clientApp angular module is, because they are also angular modules.
So in your case, I could require your app by passing 'clientApp' into my module's dependency array.
As for the file fragments clientApp needs to require, it depends on how you build your app. You can wrap all of your JS in Immediately Invoked Function Expressions AKA IIFEs like such:
(angular.module(function () {}))()
Then you just have to include each script separately in your index.html the way you would any javascript file. Their names are declared roughly in the same way as the module. Ex:
.service('sampleSvc', ['$window', 'modalSvc', function($window, modalSvc){})])
When your IIFEs are executed, these functions are registered on your app module and can then be called by name. In this case, sampleSvc.
Or you can dive into the world of build tools... Personally, I like NPM to do everything and wrote all my own shell commands for each part of the build cycle. I prefer browserify in conjunction with that. However for someone just getting started, you might want to check out grunt and gulp. (Controversial opinion time: Gulp is faster)
Also: +1 to the recommendation to study John Papa's Angular Styleguide. If I'm not mistaken it was endorsed by the angular team. Also check out his ng-demos for more robust examples.

Related

Register both non-angular and angular version of component

I have a javascript project consisting of two js-files
component.js
component.angular.js
component.js contains the actual logic exported to globals, amd or whatever. It can be used as-is if you are not using angular.
component.angular.js wraps the the logic in an angular directive, but requires the logic from component.js.
I would like to register/publish both a non-angular (only need component.js) and a angular (need both component.js and component.angular.js) version of this component in Bower.
Overall question: How to do that?
Questions that might help you figure out why I am confused:
Can you even state that two js-files needs to be used in a bower.json?
I guess registering the repository where the code lives in Bower, it will look for a bower.json file. But I guess I cannot state in a bower.json that you will need both files in case of angular and only one of them in case of non-angular.
Can I have two different bower.json files in the same repository? And register them under two different names in Bower - e.g. under "mycomponent" and "mycomponent-angular".
Do I need two repositories?
Well, I ended up having two repostories. One for sharing the raw component (on bower, npm and meteor) and one for sharing the angular wrapping depending on the raw component (also on bower, npm and meteor).
Raw component: https://github.com/TeletronicsDotAe/infinite-gallery
Angular wrapper: https://github.com/TeletronicsDotAe/infinite-gallery-angular
Do not know if that is the best way, but it works for me.

grunt an angular project then it errors as Cannot find Module

Hi I have a problem :) I developed an angular project and it works fine in my localhost apache. I'm using angular 1.4.3 for frontend things and node.js for backend things. Now I need to use Grunt to version it.
I did many config (such as that maple thing disabled.it changes all variables names such as a,b,c from indexCounter,PersonCounter,AgencyCounter and it causes some problems.) But I get an error everytime I try to run. It is like [module] cannot found. My project works on my local machine If I dont grunt it but after the grunt I take 3 files as vendor.js vendor2.js and app.js. In vendor.js I have native angular js files. In vendor2.js I have plugins. and lastly In app.js I have controllers. I'm added them in my index HTML in this order;
vendor.js
vendor2.js
app.js
Do you have any idea about that?
Problem: In angular you cannot minify your code without using either .$inject or array syntax.
Solution
For each controller, directive, service etc. that you add to your module, you will have to add en extra array of strings specifying the dependencies that should be injected into you service, controller etc.
Example
Using $inject property
function mainController(indexCounter,PersonCounter,AgencyCounter) {
//Controller implementation
}
mainController.$inject=['indexCounter','PersonCounter','AgencyCounter'];
angular
.module('mymodule')
.controller('mainController', mainController);
Using array
var mainController;
function controller(indexCounter,PersonCounter,AgencyCounter) {
//Controller implementation
}
mainController=['indexCounter','PersonCounter','AgencyCounter', controller];
angular
.module('mymodule')
.controller('mainController', mainController);
When you don't specify the dependecies in an array, angular will try to find an registered dependency based on its' parameter name. e.g. function mainController(indexCounter) {}, then angular will try to find a registered dependency called indexCounter. It works perfectly fine when the code is not minified. However, when minified the indexCounter parameter name will be changed to a shorter name, e.g. a. And when trying to find dependency a which is not registered in your app. It's gonna fail to instaciate your angular module.

Where to specify module dependencies?

I'm following the standard practice of organizing my angular assets by feature; e.g. AngularJS Folder Structure and AngularJS Best Practices: Directory Structure.
Which file should I put my module / dependency declaration in?
I'm trying to solve the following problems:
I'd like to be able to sort my <script> references alphabetically for maintenance reasons, but I can't because that breaks my Angular bootstrap (for some modules).
I've tried keeping them in the alphabetically-first *.js file in the module, but I spend a lot of time as my app grows moving my dependency declarations around.
I often have to hunt around to find module declarations.
I end up staring at Angular's relatively uninformative module error too often for related reasons.
Regardless, attaching the module declaration to a specific controller seems to imply a direct correlation that doesn't exist.
Here's an example:
metric/
_module.js // Should I create this file?
detail-controller.js
detail.html
search-filter.js
selector-controller.js
selector-directive.js
selector.html
Currently, for this module, that line of code exists in one of my module's controllers, you guess which one! ;)
As a possible solution that I'm not entirely happy with, should I put each module definition in its own tiny, one-line file?
angular.module('metric', ['lib', 'ngSanitize', 'ui.select', 'data']);
How do you do this? Am I missing some other clever or obvious solution?
p.s. as a related problem, if you feel like it, how do to track which components of your module are the source(s) of the dependency?
I would break it up even further.
metric/
metric.js
controllers/
detail-controller.js
selector-controller.js
directives/
selector-directive.js
filters/
search-filter.js
templates/
detail.html
selector.html
Now that I've been working with it for a while, and because I've started pre-compiling my javascript with gulp, the one-line module declaration file seems to be the best solution for me.
I name that file <special-character>module.js, so that it sorts visually and at compile-time to the top. Because my layout convention is one folder = one module, this works schematically. My special character is dash, YMMV. My individual .js file names don't show up in the production compiled version anyway.
It initially bothered me that there was a one-line file in my project, but now I appreciate it. It gets compiled in to my application javascript with gulp, so it's not a performance issue. Also, there's an obvious place to look for dependencies, clear trail in revision control logs of dependency changes, and simple process to document dependencies from my sources with my own custom tools.

Angular.js namespacing modules controllers

I have following structure in my application directory:
scripts/
modules/
module1/
controllers/
MainController.js
module2/
controllers/
MainController.js
main.js
What I want to achieve is to put controllers in each module to its own namespace, for example:
module1.MainController
module2.MainController
So when i use in html ng-controller="MainController" directive it knows from which module to serve it. Also it would be good that modules can communicate with each other.
Please explain to me how I can achieve this in the best way as possible, and if it's at all possible?
I've found something like this:
http://jsfiddle.net/luisperezphd/j5jzsppv/ but I'm not sure if this is good solution. It uses angular.ng-modules.js.
EDIT:
I'm trying to use Angular.js v.1.3.6. On version 1.2.x there is no problem with namespaces.
Inject one of the modules into the other using regular dependency injection:
var moduleTwo = angular.module('moduleTwo', ['otherModule']);
This allows moduleTwo to have awareness of otherModule. Then you can use a service to share state between controllers. Services are singletons (only one instance will exist), so if multiple controllers use the same service they will share that state.

Require pattern Browserify / Angular

I'm working in a project with angular and browserify, this is the first time for me to use this two tools together, so I would like some advice on which is the way to require files with browserify.
We may import those files in different ways, Until now I experimented this way:
Angular App:
app
_follow
- followController.js
- followDirective.js
- followService.js
- require.js
- app.js
For each folder with in the files for a plugin I created an require.js file and in it I require all the files of that folder. Like so:
var mnm = require('angular').module('mnm');
mnm.factory('FollowService', ['Restangular',require('./followService')]);
mnm.controller('FollowController',['$scope','FollowService',require('./followController')])
mnm.directive('mnmFollowers', ['FollowService',require('./followDirective')]);
and then require all require.js files in a unique file called app.js that will generate the bundle.js
Question:
This way to require the files can be a good structure, or it will have some problem when I need to test? I would like to see your way to achieve good structure with angular and browserify
AngularJS and browserify aren't, sadly, a great match. Certainly not like React and browserify, but I digress.
What has worked for me is having each file as an AngularJS module (because each file is already a CommonJS module) and having the files export their AngularJS module name.
So your example would look like this:
app/
app.js
follow/
controllers.js
directives.js
services.js
index.js
The app.js would look something like this:
var angular = require('angular');
var app = angular.module('mnm', [
require('./follow')
]);
// more code here
angular.bootstrap(document.body, ['mnm']);
The follow/index.js would look something like this:
var angular = require('angular');
var app = angular.module('mnm.follow', [
require('./controllers'),
require('./directives'),
require('./services')
]);
module.exports = app.name;
The follow/controllers.js would look something like this:
var angular = require('angular');
var app = angular.module('mnm.follow.controllers', [
require('./services'), // internal dependency
'ui.router' // external dependency from earlier require or <script/>
// more dependencies ...
]);
app.controller('FollowController', ['$scope', 'FollowService', function ...]);
// more code here
module.exports = app.name;
And so on.
The advantage of this approach is that you keep your dependencies as explicit as possible (i.e. inside the CommonJS module that actually needs them) and the one-to-one mapping between CommonJS module paths and AngularJS module names prevents nasty surprises.
The most obvious problem with your approach is that you're keeping the actual dependencies that will be injected separate from the function that expects them, so if a function's dependencies change, you have to touch two files instead of one. This is a code smell (i.e. a bad thing).
For testability either approach should work as Angular's module system is essentially a giant blob and importing two modules that both define the same name will override each other.
EDIT (two years later): Some other people (both here and elsewhere) have suggested alternative approaches so I should probably address them and what the trade-offs are:
Have one global AngularJS module for your entire app and just do requires for side-effects (i.e. don't have the sub-modules export anything but manipulate the global angular object).
This seems to be the most common solution but kind of flies in the face of having modules at all. This seems to be the most pragmatic approach however and if you're using AngularJS you're already polluting globals so I guess having purely side-effect based modules is the least of your architectural problems.
Concatenate your AngularJS app code before passing it to Browserify.
This is the most literal solution to "let's combine AngularJS and Browserify". It's a valid approach if you're starting from the traditional "just blindly concatenate your app files" position of AngularJS and want to add Browserify for third-party libs, so I guess that makes it valid.
As far as your app structure goes this doesn't really improve anything by adding Browserify, though.
Like 1 but with each index.js defining its own AngularJS sub-module.
This is the boilerplate approach suggested by Brian Ogden. This suffers from all the drawbacks of 1 but creates some semblance of hierarchy within AngularJS in that at least you have more than one AngularJS module and the AngularJS module names actually correspond to your directory structure.
However the major drawback is that you now have two sets of namespaces to worry about (your actual modules and your AngularJS modules) but nothing enforcing consistency between them. Not only do you have to remember to import the right modules (which again purely rely on side-effects) but you also have to remember to add them to all the right lists and add the same boilerplate to every new file. This makes refactoring incredibly unwieldy and makes this the worst option in my opinion.
If I had to chose today, I would go with 2 because it gives up all pretense of AngularJS and Browserify being able to be unified and just leaves both to do their own thing. Plus if you already have an AngularJS build system it literally just means adding an extra step for Browserify.
If you're not inheriting an AngularJS code base and want to know which approach works best for starting a new project instead: don't start a new project in AngularJS. Either pick Angular2 which supports a real module system out of the box, or switch to React or Ember which don't suffer from this problem.
I was trying to use browserify with Angular but found it got a bit messy. I didn't like the pattern of creating a named service / controller then requiring it from another location, e.g.
angular.module('myApp').controller('charts', require('./charts'));
The controller name / definition is in one file, but the function itself is in another. Also having lots of index.js files makes it really confusing if you lots of files open in an IDE.
So I put together this gulp plugin, gulp-require-angular which allows you write Angular using standard Angular syntax, all js files which contain angular modules and dependencies of angular modules which appear in your main module dependency tree are require()'d into a generated entry file, which you then use as your browserify entry file.
You can still use require() within your code base to pull in external libraries (e.g lodash) into services / filters / directives as needed.
Here's the latest Angular seed forked and updated to use gulp-require-angular.
I've used a hybrid approach much like pluma. I created ng-modules like so:
var name = 'app.core'
angular.module(name, [])
.service('srvc', ['$rootScope', '$http', require( './path/to/srvc' ))
.service('srvc2', ['$rootScope', '$http', require( './path/to/srvc2' ))
.config...
.etc
module.exports = name
I think the difference is that I don't define individual ng-modules as dependencies to the main ng-module, in this case I wouldn't define a Service as an ng-module and then list it as a dep of the app.core ng-module. I try to keep it as flat as possible:
//srvc.js - see below
module.exports = function( $rootScope, $http )
{
var api = {};
api.getAppData = function(){ ... }
api.doSomething = function(){ ... }
return api;
}
Regarding the comment of code-smell, I disagree. While it's an extra step, it allows for some great configurability in terms of testing against mock-services. For instance I use this quite a bit for testing agains services that might not have an existing server-API ready:
angular.module(name, [])
// .service('srvc', ['$rootScope', '$http', require( './path/to/srvc' ))
.service('srvc', ['$rootScope', '$http', require( './path/to/mockSrvc' ))
So any controller or object dependent on srvc doesn't know which it is getting. I could see this getting a bit convoluted in terms of services being dependent on other services, but that to me is bad design. I prefer to use ng's event system to communicate betw. services so that you keep their coupling down.
Alan Plum's answer is just not a great answer or at least not a great demonstration of CommonJS modules and Browserify with Angular. The claim that Browserify does not mix well with Angular, compared to React is just not true.
Browserify and a CommonJS module pattern work great with Angular, allowing you to organize by features instead of types, keep vars out of global scope and share Angular Modules across apps easily. Not to mention you do not need to ever add a single <script> to your HTML ever again thanks to Browserify finding all your dependencies.
What is particular flawed in Alan Plum's answer is not letting requires in each index.js for each folder dictate dependencies for Angular modules, controllers, services, configurations, routes etc. There is no need for a single require in the Angular.module instantiation, nor a single module.exports as in the context that Alan Plum's answer suggests.
See here for a better module pattern for Angular using Browserify: https://github.com/Sweetog/yet-another-angular-boilerplate

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