7 Essential Tips to Optimize Angular Applications for High Performance and Best Practices
By now everyone knows that Angular is a powerful and popular web application framework developed by Google and with its robust features and ease of use, it has become the go-to choice for developers when building single-page applications (SPAs). However, as your Angular application grows, performance can become a critical concern. In this blog post, we'll explore seven essential tips for optimizing Angular applications' performance and outline some best practices to follow to ensure your application's success
Use Lazy Loading: Lazy loading is a technique that defers the loading of non-critical modules until they are actually needed. Implementing lazy loading in your Angular application can significantly reduce the initial load time and improve overall performance. To enable lazy loading, use the loadChildren property in your routing configuration and split your application into smaller feature modules.
Implement Change Detection Strategy: Angular's default change detection mechanism can be a performance bottleneck for large applications with complex components. By implementing the OnPush change detection strategy, you can optimize the process by only checking for changes when the input properties of a component change. To implement the OnPush strategy, simply set the changeDetection property in your component's decorator.
Use the Async Pipe: Working with asynchronous data, such as Observables, can lead to unnecessary change detection cycles in your Angular application. The async pipe is a convenient tool that allows you to automatically update your view as new data becomes available without triggering additional change detection cycles. By using the async pipe in your templates, you can minimize the number of unnecessary change detections and boost your application's performance.
Optimize Template Expressions: Complex template expressions can be a performance drain, as they are executed repeatedly during change detection. To optimize your Angular application's performance, simplify your template expressions, and avoid using complex logic in your templates. Instead, use component methods or getters to process the data and return a simple value that can be easily rendered by the template.
Implement TrackBy in ngFor: When using ngFor to loop through a list of items, Angular recreates the DOM elements each time the list changes, which can be slow and inefficient. By implementing a trackBy function, you can help Angular identify which items have changed and update only the necessary elements, resulting in a more efficient rendering process and better performance.
Use AOT Compilation: Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation is a process that compiles your Angular application's code during the build process, rather than at runtime. AOT compilation reduces the size of your application, speeds up initial load times, and improves overall performance. To enable AOT compilation, simply add the --aot flag to your build command or configure it in your angular.json file.
Leverage Angular's Built-in Performance Tools: Angular offers several built-in tools to help you optimize your application's performance, such as the Angular CLI and the Angular DevTools extension. Use the Angular CLI to analyze bundle sizes, create production builds, and identify potential performance bottlenecks. With the Angular DevTools extension, you can debug and profile your application to gain insight into its runtime performance and identify areas for improvement.
In conclusion, optimizing your Angular application's performance is essential for delivering a fast, responsive, and user-friendly experience. By following these seven best practices and leveraging Angular's built-in performance tools, such as the Angular CLI and the Angular DevTools extension, you can ensure that your Angular application runs more efficiently. As a result, your app will be more competitive and appealing to users, ultimately leading to its success. The Angular CLI enables you to analyze bundle sizes, create production builds, and identify potential performance bottlenecks, while the Angular DevTools extension allows you to debug and profile your application, gaining insight into its runtime performance and pinpointing areas for improvement.
Moreover, even Angular developers need to take a break sometimes, after all, we don't want to get "ng-tired"! By keeping your application efficient and your sense of humor sharp, we'll keep building successful Angular applications.