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AngularJS
Develop smaller, lighter web apps that are simple to create and easy to test, extend, and maintain as they grow. This hands-on guide introduces you to AngularJS, the open source JavaScript framework that uses Model–view–controller (MVC) architecture, data binding, client-side templates, and dependency injection to create a much-needed structure for building web apps. Guided by two engineers who worked on AngularJS at Google, you’ll walk through the framework’s key features, and then build a working AngularJS app―from layout to testing, compiling, and debugging. If you have JavaScript experience, you’ll learn how AngularJS helps reduce the complexity of your web app.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
July 25, 2013
I would rate this one as a pretty solid introduction to AngularJS, covering the framework's philosophy, the core APIs, and getting into a few (but not all) of the nuts-and-bolts. By the time you get to the end of it, you should be able to build a non-trivial app in Angular -- though the jury's out on exactly how non-trivial that will be. Green and Seshadri have a clear and straightforward approach to presenting the material (no tricks!) and it (mostly) helps that they're both so deeply involved in the framework's development.
I had quite a few "ah-ha" moments while reading this one, enough to get me better engaged with "the Angular Way" and to see some mistakes and pitfalls I was making in my own apps. Unfortunately, despite how clear Green and Seshadri are throughout the text, there are still a few concepts that don't quite ring totally clear. In particular: (1) there is a whole chapter on directives and yet at the end of it, I was not sure that I understood them that much more than when I started [1]; (2) whither filters?; (3) I have a sneaking suspicion that they slyly snuck in a few of the kinda/sorta undocumented features of the core Angular libraries without really mentioning it. [2]
Overall, the book is well-structured, with clearly titled chapters, making it easy to jump around and cherry-pick what you need out of it. If you're new to Angular, I highly recommend this book and urge you to (at a minimum) read the first four chapters.
----
[1]: That being said: you can tell just how important Green and Seshadri think directives are, and also just how complicated they think they are. Directives are introduced pretty early on, and then they get their own chapter, and then there's another more detailed (and arguably more useful) illustrative example in the "Cheatsheet and Recipes" chapter. (Which, by the way, would have been better titled as "Case Studies" -- but I digress.) Anyway: I'm thinking that directives are just one of those things that's critical to "the Angular Way" but is also fairly complex (incidentally or otherwise?) and you just need to find your own "ah-ha" moment.
[2]: I say kinda/sorta because the Angular documentation (you may have noticed) is broken down into an "API Reference" and a "Developer Guide" and it isn't always clear which features are documented where. Or why something is documented in one but not the other (or else why it's in both...) So maybe I'm being a little unfair when I say "snuck in" and "undocumented" but... well: that's how it felt.
I had quite a few "ah-ha" moments while reading this one, enough to get me better engaged with "the Angular Way" and to see some mistakes and pitfalls I was making in my own apps. Unfortunately, despite how clear Green and Seshadri are throughout the text, there are still a few concepts that don't quite ring totally clear. In particular: (1) there is a whole chapter on directives and yet at the end of it, I was not sure that I understood them that much more than when I started [1]; (2) whither filters?; (3) I have a sneaking suspicion that they slyly snuck in a few of the kinda/sorta undocumented features of the core Angular libraries without really mentioning it. [2]
Overall, the book is well-structured, with clearly titled chapters, making it easy to jump around and cherry-pick what you need out of it. If you're new to Angular, I highly recommend this book and urge you to (at a minimum) read the first four chapters.
----
[1]: That being said: you can tell just how important Green and Seshadri think directives are, and also just how complicated they think they are. Directives are introduced pretty early on, and then they get their own chapter, and then there's another more detailed (and arguably more useful) illustrative example in the "Cheatsheet and Recipes" chapter. (Which, by the way, would have been better titled as "Case Studies" -- but I digress.) Anyway: I'm thinking that directives are just one of those things that's critical to "the Angular Way" but is also fairly complex (incidentally or otherwise?) and you just need to find your own "ah-ha" moment.
[2]: I say kinda/sorta because the Angular documentation (you may have noticed) is broken down into an "API Reference" and a "Developer Guide" and it isn't always clear which features are documented where. Or why something is documented in one but not the other (or else why it's in both...) So maybe I'm being a little unfair when I say "snuck in" and "undocumented" but... well: that's how it felt.
November 11, 2013
I was frustrated with the examples of Angular JS on the official site, and wanted something higher-level that would give me a general tour of the language and framework, then dive into the nitty-gritty of how various features work. I rate this guide as excellent on the first point and mediocre on the second.
As far as introducing the main features of the language, such as controllers, injection, and directives, the book does an excellent job of explaining the general concept behind these abstractions, as well as the "why" of their intended purposes, which was the part I found incredibly lacking on the online language documentation. Your learning style may vary, but I find this kind of explanation much more helpful than just endless examples of code from which I am expected to divine best practices and quirks. All code in the book is also available on GitHub, so it's relatively easy to read this on the Kindle with a laptop open as a reference to the code (complete with syntax highlighting), which is how I read it.
So as tour of the language, and providing a good foundation for understanding what is happening in an angular application at a high level, I rate this book four or five stars. Unfortunately, some features of the framework, particularly directives, are glossed over in an almost hurried fashion. I would have really appreciated a lot more detail and explanation into the many, many knobs available to turn in these complicated features, as well as many more examples for how to use the various options. I've resorted to learning these things from code I found in the wild, while referring to the online docs, which is exactly what I was hoping to avoid in buying the book.
As far as introducing the main features of the language, such as controllers, injection, and directives, the book does an excellent job of explaining the general concept behind these abstractions, as well as the "why" of their intended purposes, which was the part I found incredibly lacking on the online language documentation. Your learning style may vary, but I find this kind of explanation much more helpful than just endless examples of code from which I am expected to divine best practices and quirks. All code in the book is also available on GitHub, so it's relatively easy to read this on the Kindle with a laptop open as a reference to the code (complete with syntax highlighting), which is how I read it.
So as tour of the language, and providing a good foundation for understanding what is happening in an angular application at a high level, I rate this book four or five stars. Unfortunately, some features of the framework, particularly directives, are glossed over in an almost hurried fashion. I would have really appreciated a lot more detail and explanation into the many, many knobs available to turn in these complicated features, as well as many more examples for how to use the various options. I've resorted to learning these things from code I found in the wild, while referring to the online docs, which is exactly what I was hoping to avoid in buying the book.
August 9, 2013
Considering it's one of a handful of books on the fairly new framework it does a good job in providing an introduction.
Although, having worked on a fairly complex Angularjs app, I did find it a bit lacking in code samples for some of the issues we encountered along the way.
Good start. Looking forward to seeing more books on the subject
Although, having worked on a fairly complex Angularjs app, I did find it a bit lacking in code samples for some of the issues we encountered along the way.
Good start. Looking forward to seeing more books on the subject
July 26, 2016
An excellent and thorough introduction to AngularJS. I'd recommend going through the tutorial on the home page of AngularJS's site first to get some context, then read this. It's easy to read from beginning to end, and chock full of useful information.
July 20, 2014
Teaches the basic, but it's really out of date.
April 26, 2014
good for getting started
February 28, 2019
I have been hearing about the AngularJS library for a few months now, people often praising it as the new paradigm of web development. It is basically a JavaScript MVC framework that makes heavy use of markup language in order to declare the desired behavior. Invented at Google by Miško Hevery, it uses cacheable templates, databinding and dependency injection to combine the various components that otherwise are independent and testable. It also comes with its own testing framework (unit and end-to-end) and a way to describe unit tests Jasmine (BDD)style.
So I started reading about this new framework in the book intuitively called AngularJS, written by Brad Green and Shyam Seshadri. They start with an anecdote, discussing how they were working on a web application at Google. They have already written 17000 lines of code in about 6 months and it was almost finished, albeit with great frustration related to development speed and testability. This guy, Miško Hevery, tells everyone that by using a framework that he wrote in his spare time (you gotta love devs!) they could rewrite the whole application in two weeks. He was wrong, they did it in three weeks and at the end the whole thing has only 1500 lines of code and was fully testable. This was a great beginning for the book, as it starts with a promise and then (sorry, couldn't help the pun - you will see what I mean if you read the book or know AngularJS already) it describes how to achieve your goals. The book itself is not large, about 160 PDF pages, and can be used as both a primer and a reference. It describes the basic concepts of AngularJS and how they can be put to work, with some small app examples at the end. Of course, you have a link to where to download all their code samples.
What do I think about the book? It was pretty good. It shows the authors' preference towards Linux setups, but it is not annoying. Each chapter is clear and to the point. The framework itself, though, is original enough that after a few chapters it is almost impossible to understand everything without tinkering with the code yourself. Unfortunately I didn't have the time and disposition to do that, so just because I've read the book doesn't mean I know how to work with Angular, but I am confident that when I will actually start working with it, it will all come together in my mind. Also, as I was saying, the book can easily be used as a reference. It is not a complete overview, not every AngularJS feature and gotcha can be found in its pages, but it's good enough.
What do I think about the framework? It seems pretty spectacular. My only experience with JavaScript MVC frameworks is from a short brush off with BackboneJS. At a time I thought I would be working with it a lot and was boasting here that interesting posts would appear. Alas, it was not to be. Sorry about that, maybe better luck with Angular. Backbone was pretty interesting, but it had a horrendous way of working with data models and it was very easy to break something and not realize where it came from. There seems to be a lot more thought put into Angular. An interesting point is that the writers advertise TDD as a way of actually working and claim they do so themselves. I have seen many people trying and giving up, but I have hopes for JavaScript. You don't need to compile things, you don't need complicated servers or time consuming deployment steps: just change stuff and run the tests and/or refresh a page. I like the fact that the creators of AngularJS put this much work into making everything testable.
So I started reading about this new framework in the book intuitively called AngularJS, written by Brad Green and Shyam Seshadri. They start with an anecdote, discussing how they were working on a web application at Google. They have already written 17000 lines of code in about 6 months and it was almost finished, albeit with great frustration related to development speed and testability. This guy, Miško Hevery, tells everyone that by using a framework that he wrote in his spare time (you gotta love devs!) they could rewrite the whole application in two weeks. He was wrong, they did it in three weeks and at the end the whole thing has only 1500 lines of code and was fully testable. This was a great beginning for the book, as it starts with a promise and then (sorry, couldn't help the pun - you will see what I mean if you read the book or know AngularJS already) it describes how to achieve your goals. The book itself is not large, about 160 PDF pages, and can be used as both a primer and a reference. It describes the basic concepts of AngularJS and how they can be put to work, with some small app examples at the end. Of course, you have a link to where to download all their code samples.
What do I think about the book? It was pretty good. It shows the authors' preference towards Linux setups, but it is not annoying. Each chapter is clear and to the point. The framework itself, though, is original enough that after a few chapters it is almost impossible to understand everything without tinkering with the code yourself. Unfortunately I didn't have the time and disposition to do that, so just because I've read the book doesn't mean I know how to work with Angular, but I am confident that when I will actually start working with it, it will all come together in my mind. Also, as I was saying, the book can easily be used as a reference. It is not a complete overview, not every AngularJS feature and gotcha can be found in its pages, but it's good enough.
What do I think about the framework? It seems pretty spectacular. My only experience with JavaScript MVC frameworks is from a short brush off with BackboneJS. At a time I thought I would be working with it a lot and was boasting here that interesting posts would appear. Alas, it was not to be. Sorry about that, maybe better luck with Angular. Backbone was pretty interesting, but it had a horrendous way of working with data models and it was very easy to break something and not realize where it came from. There seems to be a lot more thought put into Angular. An interesting point is that the writers advertise TDD as a way of actually working and claim they do so themselves. I have seen many people trying and giving up, but I have hopes for JavaScript. You don't need to compile things, you don't need complicated servers or time consuming deployment steps: just change stuff and run the tests and/or refresh a page. I like the fact that the creators of AngularJS put this much work into making everything testable.
January 22, 2019
This book packed a lot of content in a tiny package. Reading it at a time where angular Js is nearing the end of its life just gives me hope for the future. It was written before components were the main way of structuring angular applications and you would have to ignore that if you really want to get the most out of it. Still recommend it if you want a high level overview of how things work in Angular Js.
September 12, 2017
Really nice book to get up and running with AngularJS. It also has a few nice tips on programming principles.
April 16, 2019
I found the APress Angular book to be more comprehensive
June 30, 2023
已经比较老了，讲的也很基础，可以仅作入门书
January 3, 2015
My background:
Worked on 3 relatively small (tens of KLOCs of JS/HTML Angular code) before reading this book. Had contact before with most of the subjects covered in the book (my experience with directives being relatively the weakest part).
As for the book:
Pretty solid introduction to Angular framework. Contrary to most books these days I didn't have a feeling of slow pace (I'd say it is just OK). Size of the book (~300 pages) is IMHO enough for introduction that generally covers all the topics (obviously not very extensively but then again I don't think the role of the book is to go that deep). Actually I'd say that some mild prior experience with Angular or other SPA framework would be desirable before reading this book (mainly because you may get lost in the world of controllers, services, filters, scopes, directives etc. - but that's more of complexity of Angular than the problem with the book itself).
If you have more experience with Angular and your knowledge comes mainly from tutorials, docs and blogs - a quick win is to read last chapter "15. Guidelines And Best Practices" - which contains lots of condensed & valuable knowledge.
Overall - it's a solid introductory material which on the one hand is relatively concrete (and thus not boring) and on the other hand is easily "digestible". 4 stars as it's a solid reading (though not exceptional).
Worked on 3 relatively small (tens of KLOCs of JS/HTML Angular code) before reading this book. Had contact before with most of the subjects covered in the book (my experience with directives being relatively the weakest part).
As for the book:
Pretty solid introduction to Angular framework. Contrary to most books these days I didn't have a feeling of slow pace (I'd say it is just OK). Size of the book (~300 pages) is IMHO enough for introduction that generally covers all the topics (obviously not very extensively but then again I don't think the role of the book is to go that deep). Actually I'd say that some mild prior experience with Angular or other SPA framework would be desirable before reading this book (mainly because you may get lost in the world of controllers, services, filters, scopes, directives etc. - but that's more of complexity of Angular than the problem with the book itself).
If you have more experience with Angular and your knowledge comes mainly from tutorials, docs and blogs - a quick win is to read last chapter "15. Guidelines And Best Practices" - which contains lots of condensed & valuable knowledge.
Overall - it's a solid introductory material which on the one hand is relatively concrete (and thus not boring) and on the other hand is easily "digestible". 4 stars as it's a solid reading (though not exceptional).
November 2, 2014
I'll start with the positives.
The book has some good information on the basics about AngularJS. The author has no doubt explained the concepts of this new programming model in a very easy and understandable manner.
The chapters in the book start slow, but pick up the pace pretty quickly. Building the app along with the book in the Chapter 4 helped me understand a lot more about the subject.
Chapter 8 also has some very good code samples that will assist you when you get stuck in your app.
But, the book has a few shortcomings. The main drawback of the book, IMHO, is the lack of a chapter dedicated to Testing. The chapter could have stepped through how to set up your unit testing environment and the e2e test environment using Testacular/Karma, with code samples of course.
The code snippets have bugs in them, although the errata will help you (if you din't figure out that the tag was missing, that is).
The authors could have discussed a few other features like ngCloak, $cacheFactory, $anchorScroll just to name a few.
The book has some good information on the basics about AngularJS. The author has no doubt explained the concepts of this new programming model in a very easy and understandable manner.
The chapters in the book start slow, but pick up the pace pretty quickly. Building the app along with the book in the Chapter 4 helped me understand a lot more about the subject.
Chapter 8 also has some very good code samples that will assist you when you get stuck in your app.
But, the book has a few shortcomings. The main drawback of the book, IMHO, is the lack of a chapter dedicated to Testing. The chapter could have stepped through how to set up your unit testing environment and the e2e test environment using Testacular/Karma, with code samples of course.
The code snippets have bugs in them, although the errata will help you (if you din't figure out that the tag was missing, that is).
The authors could have discussed a few other features like ngCloak, $cacheFactory, $anchorScroll just to name a few.
December 7, 2013
A good overview, but I would have appreciated a little bit of a more "backstage" view of Angular - i.e., how it all works behind the scenes. I find that is often most helpful in figuring out why the framework doesn't work the way I think it should.
I should also add that the book sort of fell apart around chapter 7 - I found that chapter a bit more disorganized and less-helpful than the rest of the book. The sidebar on $scope.apply was almost comically unclear, despite its pretense of clarifying a question which I hadn't even had until that point in the book.
All the same - this book is a very good introduction to the framework. It could certainly use a more detailed companion, though.
I should also add that the book sort of fell apart around chapter 7 - I found that chapter a bit more disorganized and less-helpful than the rest of the book. The sidebar on $scope.apply was almost comically unclear, despite its pretense of clarifying a question which I hadn't even had until that point in the book.
All the same - this book is a very good introduction to the framework. It could certainly use a more detailed companion, though.
October 20, 2013
From the conclusion: “Our aim with this book was to provide a solid foundation from which one can begin her explorations and become comfortable with developing in AngularJS.”
With that, I'd say they achieved their goal. It's not a very thorough book, giving only a basic treatment to most Angular concepts. I got it during a 50% off sale, and for $7.49 it's a decent book. For $15... I'm not sure. There's a lot of info on the internet about Angular which probably covers the same topics with the same amount of expertise and depth. I got it mostly to have something about Angular to read offline/while commuting.
With that, I'd say they achieved their goal. It's not a very thorough book, giving only a basic treatment to most Angular concepts. I got it during a 50% off sale, and for $7.49 it's a decent book. For $15... I'm not sure. There's a lot of info on the internet about Angular which probably covers the same topics with the same amount of expertise and depth. I got it mostly to have something about Angular to read offline/while commuting.
June 2, 2013
A large number of the examples are incorrectly printed and won't work without changes, which left me with an awful taste in my mouth. I was unsure whether they were misprinted on purpose, as an exercise to the reader to figure out what was wrong, or if the author/editors really never bothered to check any of the example code. Book was ok otherwise, although much of the examples aren't much better than the examples on the official AngularJS site.
See Errata page at http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp...
See Errata page at http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp...
September 15, 2013
Una discreta introduzione ad AngularJS, ma che lascia troppe cose in sospeso.
Alcuni degli esempi non funzionano perché mancano le parti server, e alcuni concetti sono spiegati in modo un po' fumoso. Magari rileggendolo una seconda volta qualcosa può risultare più chiaro, ma nel complesso forse avrebbe bisogno di una revisione dopo aver sentito i dubbi di uno sviluppatore che si stia avvicinando ad AngularJS.
Alcuni degli esempi non funzionano perché mancano le parti server, e alcuni concetti sono spiegati in modo un po' fumoso. Magari rileggendolo una seconda volta qualcosa può risultare più chiaro, ma nel complesso forse avrebbe bisogno di una revisione dopo aver sentito i dubbi di uno sviluppatore che si stia avvicinando ad AngularJS.
January 3, 2024
This was a good introductory book to Angular, the examples were useful and the presentation was great for reading cover to cover. It was short, but, I still feel like I could edit existing Angular code after having read it.
With that said, I do not feel that I could create new functionality from only what I learned in this book. I will need to invest more time into working other examples to enable that kind of work.
With that said, I do not feel that I could create new functionality from only what I learned in this book. I will need to invest more time into working other examples to enable that kind of work.
October 22, 2014
Excellent introduction to the beginner and intermediate front-end dev. This or something of similar quality is necessary for the newer JS dev to get started as there's far too steep a learning-curve to tackle. Perhaps most importantly it starts the important step of establishing the necessary patterns which - for the beginner - are wholly unknown. Though like most JS books it's at risk of becoming dated rapidly.
October 23, 2016
Really lacking. Book is a list of individual chapters tied together. Or at least that's what my impression was at the time of reading it.
It felt really disjointed and badly directed. The Angular documentation had better tutorials at that time and I can't say the Angular documentation is good even to date.
I recommend going for the AngularJS Up and Running book which is the new edition of this book that does justice.
It felt really disjointed and badly directed. The Angular documentation had better tutorials at that time and I can't say the Angular documentation is good even to date.
I recommend going for the AngularJS Up and Running book which is the new edition of this book that does justice.
July 19, 2013
Otro libro que me tardé algo en leer, Angular me emociona muchísimo, le prefiero por encima de Backbone con los ojos cerrados. Es más flexible, idiomático y testeable. Una gran herramienta esta obra. Green habla muy claramente sobre detalles importantísimos que necesitas comprender para sacarle provecho a Angular al máximo. :D
October 2, 2013
This book is one of the first books about angularjs, it doesn't have in-depth info about the framework, but does a great job as introductory book to the framework, make sure to check the errata since there are many mistakes.
August 25, 2014
Nice and extensive introduction to AngularJS. Some subjects are covered only superficially, but more than enough to get you going. I found some typos that made me re-read twice, and also some passages could be improved, but overall it covers most, if not all, Angular's features well enough.
November 16, 2013
Many of the examples had simple mistakes that I eventually figured out but could of done without the hassle of debugging.
Difficulty level varies dramatically.
I ended up learning more from egghead.io
Difficulty level varies dramatically.
I ended up learning more from egghead.io
May 15, 2014
Прочитал только первые две главы которые были доступны бесплатно.
Очень доступно и просто написано, мне для старта этих двух первых глав оказалось достаточно, остальное можно разобрать самостоятельно.
Очень доступно и просто написано, мне для старта этих двух первых глав оказалось достаточно, остальное можно разобрать самостоятельно.
September 7, 2014
If you are a novice in angular, I will definitely recommend this book. Every feature in angular js well augmented and explained with examples. This is undoubtedly one of the best books on angular in the market
June 5, 2016
I don't particularly like the 20 page code example kind of books. But other than that this is a great introduction to angular, and the integration with RequireJS and testing with jasmine and Karma were definitely a plus for the book.
October 25, 2014
This good really helped me to go beyond the basics in AngularJS.
November 25, 2013
For me, this made the Angular way "click" in my head, much more so than the online docs.
August 26, 2013
I think it was off to a great start in the first chapters then starting with the tools chapter it started to introduce to many new (for me complex) things simultainiusly.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews