Thinking in AngularJS if I have a jQuery background

Question

Suppose I m familiar with developing client-side applications in jQuery  but now I d like to start using AngularJS  Can you describe the paradigm shift that is necessary  Here are a few questions that might help you frame an answer    How do I architect and design client-side web applications differently  What is the biggest difference  What should I stop doing using  What should I start doing using instead  Are there any server-side considerations restrictions    I m not looking for a detailed comparison between jQuery and AngularJS

User · Answer

Can you describe the paradigm shift that is necessary?

Imperative vs Declarative

With jQuery you tell the DOM what needs to happen, step by step. With AngularJS you describe what results you want but not how to do it. More on this here. Also, check out Mark Rajcok's answer.

How do I architect and design client-side web apps differently?

AngularJS is an entire client-side framework that uses the MVC pattern (check out their graphical representation). It greatly focuses on separation of concerns.

What is the biggest difference? What should I stop doing/using; what should I start doing/using instead?

jQuery is a library

AngularJS is a beautiful client-side framework, highly testable, that combines tons of cool stuff such as MVC, dependency injection, data binding and much more.

It focuses on separation of concerns and testing (unit testing and end-to-end testing), which facilitates test-driven development.

The best way to start is going through their awesome tutorial. You can go through the steps in a couple of hours; however, in case you want to master the concepts behind the scenes, they include a myriad of reference for further reading.

Are there any server-side considerations/restrictions?

You may use it on existing applications where you are already using pure jQuery. However, if you want to fully take advantage of the AngularJS features you may consider coding the server side using a RESTful approach.

Doing so will allow you to leverage their resource factory, which creates an abstraction of your server side RESTful API and makes server-side calls (get, save, delete, etc.) incredibly easy.

User · Answer

AngularJS vs  jQuery  AngularJS and jQuery adopt very different ideologies  If you re coming from jQuery you may find some of the differences surprising  Angular may make you angry   This is normal  you should push through  Angular is worth it   The big difference  TLDR   jQuery gives you a toolkit for selecting arbitrary bits of the DOM and making ad-hoc changes to them  You can do pretty much anything you like piece by piece   AngularJS instead gives you a compiler   What this means is that AngularJS reads your entire DOM from top to bottom and treats it as code  literally as instructions to the compiler  As it traverses the DOM  It looks for specific directives  compiler directives  that tell the AngularJS compiler how to behave and what to do  Directives are little objects full of JavaScript which can match against attributes  tags  classes or even comments    When the Angular compiler determines that a piece of the DOM matches a particular directive  it calls the directive function  passing it the DOM element  any attributes  the current  scope  which is a local variable store   and some other useful bits  These attributes may contain expressions which can be interpreted by the Directive  and which tell it how to render  and when it should redraw itself   Directives can then in turn pull in additional Angular components such as controllers  services  etc  What comes out the bottom of the compiler is a fully formed web application  wired up and ready to go   This means that Angular is Template Driven  Your template drives the JavaScript  not the other way around  This is a radical reversal of roles  and the complete opposite of the unobtrusive JavaScript we have been writing for the last 10 years or so  This can take some getting used to   If this sounds like it might be over-prescriptive and limiting  nothing could be farther from the truth  Because AngularJS treats your HTML as code  you get HTML level granularity in your web application  Everything is possible  and most things are surprisingly easy once you make a few conceptual leaps   Let s get down to the nitty gritty   First up  Angular doesn t replace jQuery  Angular and jQuery do different things  AngularJS gives you a set of tools to produce web applications  jQuery mainly gives you tools for modifying the DOM  If jQuery is present on your page  AngularJS will use it automatically  If it isn t  AngularJS ships with jQuery Lite  which is a cut down  but still perfectly usable version of jQuery   Misko likes jQuery and doesn t object to you using it  However you will find as you advance that you can get a pretty much all of your work done using a combination of scope  templates and directives  and you should prefer this workflow where possible because your code will be more discrete  more configurable  and more Angular   If you do use jQuery  you shouldn t be sprinkling it all over the place  The correct place for DOM manipulation in AngularJS is in a directive  More on these later   Unobtrusive JavaScript with Selectors vs  Declarative Templates  jQuery is typically applied unobtrusively  Your JavaScript code is linked in the header  or the footer   and this is the only place it is mentioned  We use selectors to pick out bits of the page and write plugins to modify those parts   The JavaScript is in control  The HTML has a completely independent existence  Your HTML remains semantic even without JavaScript  Onclick attributes are very bad practice   One of the first things your will notice about AngularJS is that custom attributes are everywhere  Your HTML will be littered with ng attributes  which are essentially onClick attributes on steroids  These are directives  compiler directives   and are one of the main ways in which the template is hooked to the model   When you first see this you might be tempted to write AngularJS off as old school intrusive JavaScript  like I did at first   In fact  AngularJS does not play by those rules  In AngularJS  your HTML5 is a template  It is compiled by AngularJS to produce your web page   This is the first big difference  To jQuery  your web page is a DOM to be manipulated  To AngularJS  your HTML is code to be compiled  AngularJS reads in your whole web page and literally compiles it into a new web page using its built in compiler   Your template should be declarative  its meaning should be clear simply by reading it  We use custom attributes with meaningful names  We make up new HTML elements  again with meaningful names  A designer with minimal HTML knowledge and no coding skill can read your AngularJS template and understand what it is doing  He or she can make modifications  This is the Angular way   The template is in the driving seat   One of the first questions I asked myself when starting AngularJS and running through the tutorials is  Where is my code    I ve written no JavaScript  and yet I have all this behaviour  The answer is obvious  Because AngularJS compiles the DOM  AngularJS is treating your HTML as code  For many simple cases it s often sufficient to just write a template and let AngularJS compile it into an application for you   Your template drives your application  It s treated as a DSL  You write AngularJS components  and AngularJS will take care of pulling them in and making them available at the right time based on the structure of your template  This is very different to a standard MVC pattern  where the template is just for output   It s more similar to XSLT than Ruby on Rails for example   This is a radical inversion of control that takes some getting used to   Stop trying to drive your application from your JavaScript  Let the template drive the application  and let AngularJS take care of wiring the components together  This also is the Angular way   Semantic HTML vs  Semantic Models  With jQuery your HTML page should contain semantic meaningful content  If the JavaScript is turned off  by a user or search engine  your content remains accessible   Because AngularJS treats your HTML page as a template  The template is not supposed to be semantic as your content is typically stored in your model which ultimately comes from your API  AngularJS compiles your DOM with the model to produce a semantic web page   Your HTML source is no longer semantic  instead  your API and compiled DOM are semantic   In AngularJS  meaning lives in the model  the HTML is just a template  for display only   At this point you likely have all sorts of questions concerning SEO and accessibility  and rightly so  There are open issues here  Most screen readers will now parse JavaScript  Search engines can also index AJAXed content  Nevertheless  you will want to make sure you are using pushstate URLs and you have a decent sitemap  See here for a discussion of the issue  https   stackoverflow com a 23245379 687677  Separation of concerns  SOC  vs  MVC  Separation of concerns  SOC  is a pattern that grew up over many years of web development for a variety of reasons including SEO  accessibility and browser incompatibility  It looks like this    HTML - Semantic meaning  The HTML should stand alone  CSS - Styling  without the CSS the page is still readable  JavaScript - Behaviour  without the script the content remains    Again  AngularJS does not play by their rules  In a stroke  AngularJS does away with a decade of received wisdom and instead implements an MVC pattern in which the template is no longer semantic  not even a little bit   It looks like this    Model - your models contains your semantic data  Models are usually JSON objects  Models exist as attributes of an object called  scope  You can also store handy utility functions on  scope which your templates can then access  View - Your views are written in HTML  The view is usually not semantic because your data lives in the model  Controller - Your controller is a JavaScript function which hooks the view to the model  Its function is to initialise  scope  Depending on your application  you may or may not need to create a controller  You can have many controllers on a page    MVC and SOC are not on opposite ends of the same scale  they are on completely different axes  SOC makes no sense in an AngularJS context  You have to forget it and move on   If  like me  you lived through the browser wars  you might find this idea quite offensive  Get over it  it ll be worth it  I promise   Plugins vs  Directives  Plugins extend jQuery  AngularJS Directives extend the capabilities of your browser   In jQuery we define plugins by adding functions to the jQuery prototype  We then hook these into the DOM by selecting elements and calling the plugin on the result  The idea is to extend the capabilities of jQuery   For example  if you want a carousel on your page  you might define an unordered list of figures  perhaps wrapped in a nav element  You might then write some jQuery to select the list on the page and restyle it as a gallery with timeouts to do the sliding animation   In AngularJS  we define directives  A directive is a function which returns a JSON object  This object tells AngularJS what DOM elements to look for  and what changes to make to them  Directives are hooked in to the template using either attributes or elements  which you invent  The idea is to extend the capabilities of HTML with new attributes and elements   The AngularJS way is to extend the capabilities of native looking HTML  You should write HTML that looks like HTML  extended with custom attributes and elements   If you want a carousel  just use a  lt carousel   gt  element  then define a directive to pull in a template  and make that sucker work   Lots of small directives vs  big plugins with configuration switches  The tendency with jQuery is to write great big plugins like lightbox which we then configure by passing in numerous values and options   This is a mistake in AngularJS   Take the example of a dropdown  When writing a dropdown plugin you might be tempted to code in click handlers  perhaps a function to add in a chevron which is either up or down  perhaps change the class of the unfolded element  show hide the menu  all helpful stuff   Until you want to make a small change   Say you have a menu that you want to unfold on hover  Well now we have a problem  Our plugin has wired in our click handler for us  we re going to need to add a configuration option to make it behave differently in this specific case   In AngularJS we write smaller directives  Our dropdown directive would be ridiculously small  It might maintain the folded state  and provide methods to fold    unfold   or toggle    These methods would simply update  scope menu visible which is a boolean holding the state   Now in our template we can wire this up    lt a ng-click  toggle    gt Menu lt  a gt   lt ul ng-show  menu visible  gt         lt  ul gt    Need to update on mouseover    lt a ng-mouseenter  unfold    ng-mouseleave  fold    gt Menu lt  a gt   lt ul ng-show  menu visible  gt         lt  ul gt    The template drives the application so we get HTML level granularity  If we want to make case by case exceptions  the template makes this easy   Closure vs   scope  JQuery plugins are created in a closure  Privacy is maintained within that closure  It s up to you to maintain your scope chain within that closure  You only really have access to the set of DOM nodes passed in to the plugin by jQuery  plus any local variables defined in the closure and any globals you have defined  This means that plugins are quite self contained  This is a good thing  but can get restrictive when creating a whole application  Trying to pass data between sections of a dynamic page becomes a chore   AngularJS has  scope objects  These are special objects created and maintained by AngularJS in which you store your model  Certain directives will spawn a new  scope  which by default inherits from its wrapping  scope using JavaScript prototypical inheritance  The  scope object is accessible in the controller and the view   This is the clever part  Because the structure of  scope inheritance roughly follows the structure of the DOM  elements have access to their own scope  and any containing scopes seamlessly  all the way up to the global  scope  which is not the same as the global scope    This makes it much easier to pass data around  and to store data at an appropriate level  If a dropdown is unfolded  only the dropdown  scope needs to know about it  If the user updates their preferences  you might want to update the global  scope  and any nested scopes listening to the user preferences would automatically be alerted   This might sound complicated  in fact  once you relax into it  it s like flying  You don t need to create the  scope object  AngularJS instantiates and configures it for you  correctly and appropriately based on your template hierarchy  AngularJS then makes it available to your component using the magic of dependency injection  more on this later    Manual DOM changes vs  Data Binding  In jQuery you make all your DOM changes by hand  You construct new DOM elements programatically  If you have a JSON array and you want to put it to the DOM  you must write a function to generate the HTML and insert it   In AngularJS you can do this too  but you are encouraged to make use of data binding  Change your model  and because the DOM is bound to it via a template your DOM will automatically update  no intervention required   Because data binding is done from the template  using either an attribute or the curly brace syntax  it s super easy to do  There s little cognitive overhead associated with it so you ll find yourself doing it all the time    lt input ng-model  user name    gt    Binds the input element to  scope user name  Updating the input will update the value in your current scope  and vice-versa   Likewise    lt p gt      user name    lt  p gt    will output the user name in a paragraph  It s a live binding  so if the  scope user name value is updated  the template will update too   Ajax all of the time  In jQuery making an Ajax call is fairly simple  but it s still something you might think twice about  There s the added complexity to think about  and a fair chunk of script to maintain   In AngularJS  Ajax is your default go-to solution and it happens all the time  almost without you noticing  You can include templates with ng-include  You can apply a template with the simplest custom directive  You can wrap an Ajax call in a service and create yourself a GitHub service  or a Flickr service  which you can access with astonishing ease   Service Objects vs Helper Functions  In jQuery  if we want to accomplish a small non-dom related task such as pulling a feed from an API  we might write a little function to do that in our closure  That s a valid solution  but what if we  want to access that feed often  What if we want to reuse that code in another application   AngularJS gives us service objects   Services are simple objects that contain functions and data  They are always singletons  meaning there can never be more than one of them  Say we want to access the Stack Overflow API  we might write a StackOverflowService which defines methods for doing so   Let s say we have a shopping cart  We might define a ShoppingCartService which maintains our cart and contains methods for adding and removing items  Because the service is a singleton  and is shared by all other components  any object that needs to can write to the shopping cart and pull data from it  It s always the same cart   Service objects are self-contained AngularJS components which we can use and reuse as we see fit  They are simple JSON objects containing functions and Data  They are always singletons  so if you store data on a service in one place  you can get that data out somewhere else just by requesting the same service   Dependency injection  DI  vs  Instatiation - aka de-spaghettification  AngularJS manages your dependencies for you  If you want an object  simply refer to it and AngularJS will get it for you   Until you start to use this  it s hard to explain just what a massive time boon this is  Nothing like AngularJS DI exists inside jQuery   DI means that instead of writing your application and wiring it together  you instead define a library of components  each identified by a string   Say I have a component called  FlickrService  which defines methods for pulling JSON feeds from Flickr  Now  if I want to write a controller that can access Flickr  I just need to refer to the  FlickrService  by name when I declare the controller  AngularJS will take care of instantiating the component and making it available to my controller   For example  here I define a service   myApp service  FlickrService   function       return       getFeed  function        do something here             Now when I want to use that service I just refer to it by name like this   myApp controller  myController     FlickrService   function FlickrService      FlickrService getFeed          AngularJS will recognise that a FlickrService object is needed to instantiate the controller  and will provide one for us   This makes wiring things together very easy  and pretty much eliminates any tendency towards spagettification  We have a flat list of components  and AngularJS hands them to us one by one as and when we need them   Modular service architecture  jQuery says very little about how you should organise your code  AngularJS has opinions   AngularJS gives you modules into which you can place your code  If you re writing a script that talks to Flickr for example  you might want to create a Flickr module to wrap all your Flickr related functions in  Modules can include other modules  DI   Your main application is usually a module  and this should include all the other modules your application will depend on   You get simple code reuse  if you want to write another application based on Flickr  you can just include the Flickr module and voila  you have access to all your Flickr related functions in your new application   Modules contain AngularJS components  When we include a module  all the components in that module become available to us as a simple list identified by their unique strings  We can then inject those components into each other using AngularJS s dependency injection mechanism   To sum up  AngularJS and jQuery are not enemies  It s possible to use jQuery within AngularJS very nicely  If you re using AngularJS well  templates  data-binding   scope  directives  etc   you will find you need a lot less jQuery than you might otherwise require   The main thing to realise is that your template drives your application  Stop trying to write big plugins that do everything  Instead write little directives that do one thing  then write a simple template to wire them together   Think less about unobtrusive JavaScript  and instead think in terms of HTML extensions   My little book  I got so excited about AngularJS  I wrote a short book on it which you re very welcome to read online http   nicholasjohnson com angular-book   I hope it s helpful

User · Answer

Imperative   declarative  In jQuery  selectors are used to find DOM elements and then bind register event handlers to them  When an event triggers  that  imperative  code executes to update change the DOM   In AngularJS  you want to think about views rather than DOM elements  Views are  declarative  HTML that contain AngularJS directives  Directives set up the event handlers behind the scenes for us and give us dynamic databinding  Selectors are rarely used  so the need for IDs  and some types of classes  is greatly diminished  Views are tied to models  via scopes   Views are a projection of the model  Events change models  that is  data  scope properties   and the views that project those models update  automatically    In AngularJS  think about models  rather than jQuery-selected DOM elements that hold your data  Think about views as projections of those models  rather than registering callbacks to manipulate what the user sees   Separation of concerns  jQuery employs unobtrusive JavaScript - behavior  JavaScript  is separated from the structure  HTML    AngularJS uses controllers and directives  each of which can have their own controller  and or compile and linking functions  to remove behavior from the view structure  HTML    Angular also has services and filters to help separate organize your application   See also https   stackoverflow com a 14346528 215945  Application design  One approach to designing an AngularJS application    Think about your models  Create services or your own JavaScript objects for those models  Think about how you want to present your models -- your views  Create HTML templates for each view  using the necessary directives to get dynamic databinding  Attach a controller to each view  using ng-view and routing  or ng-controller   Have the controller find get only whatever model data the view needs to do its job  Make controllers as thin as possible    Prototypal inheritance  You can do a lot with jQuery without knowing about how JavaScript prototypal inheritance works  When developing AngularJS applications  you will avoid some common pitfalls if you have a good understanding of JavaScript inheritance  Recommended reading  What are the nuances of scope prototypal   prototypical inheritance in AngularJS

User · Answer

I find this question interesting  because my first serious exposure to JavaScript programming was Node js and AngularJS  I never learned jQuery  and I guess that s a good thing  because I don t have to unlearn anything  In fact  I actively avoid jQuery solutions to my problems  and instead  solely look for an  AngularJS way  to solve them  So  I guess my answer to this question would essentially boil down to   think like someone who never learned jQuery  and avoid any temptation to incorporate jQuery directly  obviously AngularJS uses it to some extent behind the scenes

User · Answer

They re apples and oranges  You don t want to compare them  They re two different things  AngularJs has already jQuery lite built in which allows you to perform basic DOM manipulation without even including the full blown jQuery version    jQuery is all about DOM manipulation  It solves all the cross browser pain otherwise you will have to deal with but it s not a framework that allows you to divide your app into components like AngularJS    A nice thing about AngularJs is that it allows you to separate isolate the DOM manipulation in the directives   There are built-in directives ready for you to use such as ng-click  You can create your own custom directives that will contain all your view logic or DOM manipulation so you don t end up mingle DOM manipulation code in the controllers or services that should take care of the business logic   Angular breaks down your app into  - Controllers - Services - Views - etc   and there is one more thing  that s the directive  It s an attribute  you can attach to any DOM element and you can go nuts with jQuery within it without worrying about your jQuery ever conflicts with AngularJs components or messes up with its architecture    I heard from a meetup I attended  one of the founders of Angular said they worked really hard to separate out the DOM manipulation so do not try to include them back in

User · Answer

To describe the  paradigm shift   I think a short answer can suffice   AngularJS changes the way you find elements  In jQuery  you typically  use selectors to find elements  and then wire them up      id  class   click doStuff    In AngularJS  you use directives to mark the elements directly  to wire them up   lt a ng-click  doStuff    gt   AngularJS doesn t need  or want  you to find elements using selectors - the primary difference between AngularJS s jqLite versus full-blown jQuery is that jqLite does not support selectors     So when people say  don t include jQuery at all   it s mainly because they don t want you to use selectors  they want you to learn to use directives instead  Direct  not select

User · Answer

1  Don t design your page  and then change it with DOM manipulations  In jQuery  you design a page  and then you make it dynamic  This is because jQuery was designed for augmentation and has grown incredibly from that simple premise   But in AngularJS  you must start from the ground up with your architecture in mind  Instead of starting by thinking  I have this piece of the DOM and I want to make it do X   you have to start with what you want to accomplish  then go about designing your application  and then finally go about designing your view   2  Don t augment jQuery with AngularJS  Similarly  don t start with the idea that jQuery does X  Y  and Z  so I ll just add AngularJS on top of that for models and controllers  This is really tempting when you re just starting out  which is why I always recommend that new AngularJS developers don t use jQuery at all  at least until they get used to doing things the  Angular Way    I ve seen many developers here and on the mailing list create these elaborate solutions with jQuery plugins of 150 or 200 lines of code that they then glue into AngularJS with a collection of callbacks and  applys that are confusing and convoluted  but they eventually get it working  The problem is that in most cases that jQuery plugin could be rewritten in AngularJS in a fraction of the code  where suddenly everything becomes comprehensible and straightforward   The bottom line is this  when solutioning  first  think in AngularJS   if you can t think of a solution  ask the community  if after all of that there is no easy solution  then feel free to reach for the jQuery  But don t let jQuery become a crutch or you ll never master AngularJS   3  Always think in terms of architecture  First know that single-page applications are applications  They re not webpages  So we need to think like a server-side developer in addition to thinking like a client-side developer  We have to think about how to divide our application into individual  extensible  testable components   So then how do you do that  How do you  think in AngularJS   Here are some general principles  contrasted with jQuery   The view is the  official record   In jQuery  we programmatically change the view  We could have a dropdown menu defined as a ul like so    lt ul class  main-menu  gt       lt li class  active  gt           lt a href    home  gt Home lt  a gt       lt  li gt       lt li gt           lt a href    menu1  gt Menu 1 lt  a gt           lt ul gt               lt li gt  lt a href    sm1  gt Submenu 1 lt  a gt  lt  li gt               lt li gt  lt a href    sm2  gt Submenu 2 lt  a gt  lt  li gt               lt li gt  lt a href    sm3  gt Submenu 3 lt  a gt  lt  li gt           lt  ul gt       lt  li gt       lt li gt           lt a href    home  gt Menu 2 lt  a gt       lt  li gt   lt  ul gt    In jQuery  in our application logic  we would activate it with something like       main-menu   dropdownMenu      When we just look at the view  it s not immediately obvious that there is any functionality here  For small applications  that s fine  But for non-trivial applications  things quickly get confusing and hard to maintain   In AngularJS  though  the view is the official record of view-based functionality  Our ul declaration would look like this instead    lt ul class  main-menu  dropdown-menu gt           lt  ul gt    These two do the same thing  but in the AngularJS version anyone looking at the template knows what s supposed to happen  Whenever a new member of the development team comes on board  she can look at this and then know that there is a directive called dropdownMenu operating on it  she doesn t need to intuit the right answer or sift through any code  The view told us what was supposed to happen  Much cleaner   Developers new to AngularJS often ask a question like  how do I find all links of a specific kind and add a directive onto them  The developer is always flabbergasted when we reply  you don t  But the reason you don t do that is that this is like half-jQuery  half-AngularJS  and no good  The problem here is that the developer is trying to  do jQuery  in the context of AngularJS  That s never going to work well  The view is the official record  Outside of a directive  more on this below   you never  ever  never change the DOM  And directives are applied in the view  so intent is clear   Remember  don t design  and then mark up  You must architect  and then design   Data binding  This is by far one of the most awesome features of AngularJS and cuts out a lot of the need to do the kinds of DOM manipulations I mentioned in the previous section  AngularJS will automatically update your view so you don t have to  In jQuery  we respond to events and then update content  Something like     ajax     url    myEndpoint json     success  function   data  status            ul log   append   lt li gt Data Received  lt  li gt               For a view that looks like this    lt ul class  messages  id  log  gt   lt  ul gt    Apart from mixing concerns  we also have the same problems of signifying intent that I mentioned before  But more importantly  we had to manually reference and update a DOM node  And if we want to delete a log entry  we have to code against the DOM for that too  How do we test the logic apart from the DOM  And what if we want to change the presentation   This a little messy and a trifle frail  But in AngularJS  we can do this    http    myEndpoint json    then  function   response          scope log push    msg   Data Received              And our view can look like this    lt ul class  messages  gt       lt li ng-repeat  entry in log  gt    entry msg    lt  li gt   lt  ul gt    But for that matter  our view could look like this    lt div class  messages  gt       lt div class  alert  ng-repeat  entry in log  gt             entry msg         lt  div gt   lt  div gt    And now instead of using an unordered list  we re using Bootstrap alert boxes  And we never had to change the controller code  But more importantly  no matter where or how the log gets updated  the view will change too  Automatically  Neat   Though I didn t show it here  the data binding is two-way  So those log messages could also be editable in the view just by doing this   lt input ng-model  entry msg    gt   And there was much rejoicing   Distinct model layer  In jQuery  the DOM is kind of like the model  But in AngularJS  we have a separate model layer that we can manage in any way we want  completely independently from the view  This helps for the above data binding  maintains separation of concerns  and introduces far greater testability  Other answers mentioned this point  so I ll just leave it at that   Separation of concerns  And all of the above tie into this over-arching theme  keep your concerns separate  Your view acts as the official record of what is supposed to happen  for the most part   your model represents your data  you have a service layer to perform reusable tasks  you do DOM manipulation and augment your view with directives  and you glue it all together with controllers  This was also mentioned in other answers  and the only thing I would add pertains to testability  which I discuss in another section below   Dependency injection  To help us out with separation of concerns is dependency injection  DI   If you come from a server-side language  from Java to PHP  you re probably familiar with this concept already  but if you re a client-side guy coming from jQuery  this concept can seem anything from silly to superfluous to hipster  But it s not   -   From a broad perspective  DI means that you can declare components very freely and then from any other component  just ask for an instance of it and it will be granted  You don t have to know about loading order  or file locations  or anything like that  The power may not immediately be visible  but I ll provide just one  common  example  testing   Let s say in our application  we require a service that implements server-side storage through a REST API and  depending on application state  local storage as well  When running tests on our controllers  we don t want to have to communicate with the server - we re testing the controller  after all  We can just add a mock service of the same name as our original component  and the injector will ensure that our controller gets the fake one automatically - our controller doesn t and needn t know the difference   Speaking of testing     4  Test-driven development - always  This is really part of section 3 on architecture  but it s so important that I m putting it as its own top-level section   Out of all of the many jQuery plugins you ve seen  used  or written  how many of them had an accompanying test suite  Not very many because jQuery isn t very amenable to that  But AngularJS is   In jQuery  the only way to test is often to create the component independently with a sample demo page against which our tests can perform DOM manipulation  So then we have to develop a component separately and then integrate it into our application  How inconvenient  So much of the time  when developing with jQuery  we opt for iterative instead of test-driven development  And who could blame us   But because we have separation of concerns  we can do test-driven development iteratively in AngularJS  For example  let s say we want a super-simple directive to indicate in our menu what our current route is  We can declare what we want in the view of our application    lt a href   hello  when-active gt Hello lt  a gt    Okay  now we can write a test for the non-existent when-active directive   it   should add  active  when the route changes   inject function         var elm    compile    lt a href   hello  when-active gt Hello lt  a gt       scope          location path   not-matching        expect  elm hasClass  active     toBeFalsey          location path    hello         expect  elm hasClass  active     toBeTruthy           And when we run our test  we can confirm that it fails  Only now should we create our directive    directive   whenActive   function    location         return           scope  true          link  function   scope  element  attrs                 scope  on    routeChangeSuccess   function                      if    location path      element attr   href                            element addClass   active                                       else                       element removeClass   active                                                              Our test now passes and our menu performs as requested  Our development is both iterative and test-driven  Wicked-cool   5  Conceptually  directives are not packaged jQuery  You ll often hear  only do DOM manipulation in a directive   This is a necessity  Treat it with due deference   But let s dive a little deeper     Some directives just decorate what s already in the view  think ngClass  and therefore sometimes do DOM manipulation straight away and then are basically done  But if a directive is like a  widget  and has a template  it should also respect separation of concerns  That is  the template too should remain largely independent from its implementation in the link and controller functions   AngularJS comes with an entire set of tools to make this very easy  with ngClass we can dynamically update the class  ngModel allows two-way data binding  ngShow and ngHide programmatically show or hide an element  and many more - including the ones we write ourselves  In other words  we can do all kinds of awesomeness without DOM manipulation  The less DOM manipulation  the easier directives are to test  the easier they are to style  the easier they are to change in the future  and the more re-usable and distributable they are   I see lots of developers new to AngularJS using directives as the place to throw a bunch of jQuery  In other words  they think  since I can t do DOM manipulation in the controller  I ll take that code put it in a directive   While that certainly is much better  it s often still wrong   Think of the logger we programmed in section 3  Even if we put that in a directive  we still want to do it the  Angular Way   It still doesn t take any DOM manipulation  There are lots of times when DOM manipulation is necessary  but it s a lot rarer than you think  Before doing DOM manipulation anywhere in your application  ask yourself if you really need to  There might be a better way   Here s a quick example that shows the pattern I see most frequently  We want a toggleable button   Note  this example is a little contrived and a skosh verbose to represent more complicated cases that are solved in exactly the same way     directive   myDirective   function          return           template    lt a class  btn  gt Toggle me  lt  a gt            link  function   scope  element  attrs                 var on   false                 element  click  function                      on    on                    element  toggleClass  active   on                                          There are a few things wrong with this    First  jQuery was never necessary  There s nothing we did here that needed jQuery at all  Second  even if we already have jQuery on our page  there s no reason to use it here  we can simply use angular element and our component will still work when dropped into a project that doesn t have jQuery  Third  even assuming jQuery was required for this directive to work  jqLite  angular element  will always use jQuery if it was loaded  So we needn t use the   - we can just use angular element  Fourth  closely related to the third  is that jqLite elements needn t be wrapped in   - the element that is passed to the link function would already be a jQuery element   And fifth  which we ve mentioned in previous sections  why are we mixing template stuff into our logic    This directive can be rewritten  even for very complicated cases   much more simply like so    directive   myDirective   function          return           scope  true          template    lt a class  btn  ng-class   active  on   ng-click  toggle    gt Toggle me  lt  a gt            link  function   scope  element  attrs                 scope on   false               scope toggle   function                      scope on    scope on                                        Again  the template stuff is in the template  so you  or your users  can easily swap it out for one that meets any style necessary  and the logic never had to be touched  Reusability - boom   And there are still all those other benefits  like testing - it s easy  No matter what s in the template  the directive s internal API is never touched  so refactoring is easy  You can change the template as much as you want without touching the directive  And no matter what you change  your tests still pass   w00t   So if directives aren t just collections of jQuery-like functions  what are they  Directives are actually extensions of HTML  If HTML doesn t do something you need it to do  you write a directive to do it for you  and then use it just as if it was part of HTML   Put another way  if AngularJS doesn t do something out of the box  think how the team would accomplish it to fit right in with ngClick  ngClass  et al   Summary  Don t even use jQuery  Don t even include it  It will hold you back  And when you come to a problem that you think you know how to solve in jQuery already  before you reach for the    try to think about how to do it within the confines the AngularJS  If you don t know  ask  19 times out of 20  the best way to do it doesn t need jQuery and to try to solve it with jQuery results in more work for you

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Listen to the podcast JavaScript Jabber  Episode  32 that features the original creators of AngularJS  Misko Hevery  amp  Igor Minar  They talk a lot about what it s like to come to AngularJS from other JavaScript backgrounds  especially jQuery  One of the points made in the podcast made a lot of things click for me with respects to your question   MISKO        one of the things we thought about very hardly in Angular is  how do we provide lots of escape hatches so that you can get out and basically figure out a way out of this  So to us  the answer is this thing called    Directives     And with directives  you essentially become a regular little jQuery JavaScript  you can do whatever you want  IGOR  So think of directive as the instruction to the compiler that tells it whenever you come across this certain element or this CSS in the template  and you keep this kind of code and that code is in charge of the element and everything below that element in the DOM tree   A transcript of the entire episode is available at the link provided above  So  to directly answer your question  AngularJS is -very- opinionated and is a true MV  framework  However  you can still do all of the really cool stuff you know and love with jQuery inside of directives  It s not a matter of  quot How do I do what I used to in jQuery  quot  as much as it s a matter of  quot How do I supplement AngularJS with all of the stuff I used to do in jQuery  quot  It s really two very different states of mind

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jQuery  you think a lot about  QUERYing the DOM  for DOM elements and doing something   AngularJS  THE model is the truth  and you always think from that ANGLE   For example  when you get data from THE server which you intend to display in some format in the DOM  in jQuery  you need to  1  FIND  where in the DOM you want to place this data  the  2  UPDATE APPEND  it there by creating a new node or just setting its innerHTML  Then when you want to update this view  you then  3  FIND  the location and  4  UPDATE   This cycle of find and update all done within the same context of getting and formatting data from server is gone in AngularJS   With AngularJS you have your model  JavaScript objects you are already used to  and the value of the model tells you about the model  obviously  and about the view  and an operation on the model automatically propagates to the view  so you don t have to think about it  You will find yourself in AngularJS no longer finding things in the DOM   To put in another way  in jQuery  you need to think about CSS selectors  that is  where is the div or td that has a class or attribute  etc   so that I can get their HTML or color or value  but in AngularJS  you will find yourself thinking like this  what model am I dealing with  I will set the model s value to true  You are not bothering yourself of whether the view reflecting this value is a checked box or resides in a td element  details you would have often needed to think about in jQuery    And with DOM manipulation in AngularJS  you find yourself adding directives and filters  which you can think of as valid HTML extensions   One more thing you will experience in AngularJS  in jQuery you call the jQuery functions a lot  in AngularJS  AngularJS will call your functions  so AngularJS will  tell you how to do things   but the benefits are worth it  so learning AngularJS usually means learning what AngularJS wants or the way AngularJS requires that you present your functions and it will call it accordingly  This is one of the things that makes AngularJS a framework rather than a library

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Actually  if you re using AngularJS  you don t need jQuery anymore  AngularJS itself has the binding and directive  which is a very good  replacement  for most things you can do with jQuery   I usually develop mobile applications using AngularJS and Cordova  The ONLY thing from jQuery I needed is the Selector   By googling  I see that there is a standalone jQuery selector module out there  It s Sizzle    And I decided to make a tiny code snippet that help me quickly start a website using AngularJS with the power of jQuery Selector  using Sizzle    I shared my code here  https   github com huytd Sizzular

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AngularJS and jQuery   AngularJs and JQuery are completely different at every level except the JQLite functionality and you will see it once you start learning the AngularJs core features  I explained it below    AngularJs is a client side framework that offers to build the independent client side application  JQuery is a client side library that play around the DOM   AngularJs Cool Principle - If you want some changes on your UI think from model data change perspective  Change your data and UI will re-render itself  You need not to play around DOM each time unless and until it is hardly required and that should also be handled through Angular Directives   To answer this question  I want to share my experience on the first enterprise application with AngularJS  These are the most awesome features that Angular provide where we start changing our jQuery mindset and we get the Angular like a framework and not the library   Two-way data binding is amazing   I had a grid with all functionality UPDATE  DELTE  INSERT  I have a data object that binds the grid s model using ng-repeat  You only need to write a single line of simple JavaScript code for delete and insert and that s it  grid automatically updates as the grid model changes instantly  Update functionality is real time  no code for it  You feel amazing     Reusable directives are super  Write directives in one place and use it throughout the application  OMG    I used these directive for paging  regex  validations  etc  It is really cool   Routing is strong  It s up to your implementation how you want to use it  but it requires very few lines of code to route the request to specify HTML and controller  JavaScript   Controllers are great  Controllers take care of their own HTML  but this separation works well for common functionality well as  If you want to call the same function on the click of a button on master HTML  just write the same function name in each controller and write individual code   Plugins  There are many other similar features like showing an overlay in your app  You don t need to write code for it  just use an overlay plugin available as wc-overlay  and this will automatically take care of all XMLHttpRequest  XHR  requests   Ideal for RESTful architecture  Being a complete frameworks makes AngularJS great to work with a RESTful architecture  To call REST CRUD APIs is very easier and   Services  Write common codes using services and less code in controllers  Sevices can be used to share common functionalities among the controllers   Extensibility  Angular has extended the HTML directives using angular directives  Write expressions inside html and evaluate them on runtime  Create your own directives and services and use them in another project without any extra effort

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jQuery is a DOM manipulation library   AngularJS is an MV  framework   In fact  AngularJS is one of the few JavaScript MV  frameworks  many JavaScript MVC tools still fall under the category library    Being a framework  it hosts your code and takes ownership of decisions about what to call and when   AngularJS itself includes a jQuery-lite edition within it  So for some basic DOM selection manipulation  you really don t have to include the jQuery library  it saves many bytes to run on the network    AngularJS has the concept of  Directives  for DOM manipulation and designing reusable UI components  so you should use it whenever you feel the need of doing DOM manipulation related stuff  directives are only place where you should write jQuery code while using AngularJS    AngularJS involves some learning curve  more than jQuery  -    -- For any developer coming from jQuery background  my first advice would be to  learn JavaScript as a first class language before jumping onto a rich framework like AngularJS   I learned the above fact the hard way   Good luck

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Those are some very nice  but lengthy answers   To sum up my experiences    Controllers and providers  services  factories  etc   are for modifying the data model  NOT HTML  HTML and directives define the layout and binding to the model  If you need to share data between controllers  create a service or factory - they are singletons that are shared across the application  If you need an HTML widget  create a directive  If you have some data and are now trying to update HTML    STOP  update the model  and make sure your HTML is bound to the model

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jQuery  jQuery makes ridiculously long JavaScript commands like getElementByHerpDerp shorter and cross-browser   AngularJS  AngularJS allows you to make your own HTML tags attributes that do things which work well with dynamic web applications  since HTML was designed for static pages    Edit   Saying  I have a jQuery background how do I think in AngularJS   is like saying  I have an HTML background how do I think in JavaScript   The fact that you re asking the question shows you most likely don t understand the fundamental purposes of these two resources  This is why I chose to answer the question by simply pointing out the fundamental difference rather than going through the list saying  AngularJS makes use of directives whereas jQuery uses CSS selectors to make a jQuery object which does this and that etc       This question does not require a lengthy answer   jQuery is a way to make programming JavaScript in the browser easier  Shorter  cross-browser commands  etc   AngularJS extends HTML  so you don t have to put  lt div gt  all over the place just to make an application  It makes HTML actually work for applications rather than what it was designed for  which is static  educational web pages  It accomplishes this in a roundabout way using JavaScript  but fundamentally it is an extension of HTML  not JavaScript

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As a JavaScript MV  beginner and purely focusing on the application architecture  not the server client-side matters   I would certainly recommend the following resource  which I am surprised wasn t mentioned yet   JavaScript Design Patterns  by Addy Osmani  as an introduction to different JavaScript Design Patterns  The terms used in this answer are taken from the linked document above  I m not going to repeat what was worded really well in the accepted answer  Instead  this answer links back to the theoretical backgrounds which power AngularJS  and other libraries    Like me  you will quickly realize that AngularJS  or Ember js  Durandal   amp  other MV  frameworks for that matter  is one complex framework assembling many of the different JavaScript design patterns   I found it easier also  to test  1  native JavaScript code and  2  smaller libraries for each one of these patterns separately before diving into one global framework  This allowed me to better understand which crucial issues a framework adresses  because you are personally faced with the problem    For example    JavaScript Object-oriented Programming  this is a Google search link   It is not a library  but certainly a prerequisite to any application programming  It taught me the native implementations of the prototype  constructor  singleton  amp  decorator patterns jQuery  Underscore for the facade pattern  like WYSIWYG s for manipulating the DOM  Prototype js for the prototype  constructor  mixin pattern RequireJS  Curl js for the module pattern  AMD KnockoutJS for the observable  publish subscribe pattern   NB  This list is not complete  nor  the best libraries   they just happen to be the libraries I used  These libraries also include more patterns  the ones mentioned are just their main focuses or original intents  If you feel something is missing from this list  please do mention it in the comments  and I will be glad to add it

[javascript] "Thinking in AngularJS" if I have a jQuery background?

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