What's Angular Elements? - Angular 6+ Most Appreciated Features!

Angular Elements resolve the problems of code reuse across multiple frameworks and provides a great way to use Angular components in non-Angular environments.

So, where would we use Angular Elements? Rob Wormald covered three main areas with examples in his ng-conf 2018 talkon Angular Elements.

The list of browsers support for custom Angular elements -

1.      Chrome,

2.      Opera,

3.      Safari,

4.      Firefox,

5.      Edge

What's Angular Elements?

Angular Element is a package which is part of the Angular framework- @angular/elements and it was introduced in Angular 6 and hopefully, this will improve with Angular 7 or higher versions.

Angular Elements was the brainchild of Angular’s and it one of the most anticipated features of Angular 6 release.

Angular 6 will be the first release that fully supports Angular elements.

Angular elements will give you the ability to use your Angular components in other environments like a jQuery app or Vue.js app or anything else.

It is very useful, especially when you working with dynamically loaded HTML code.

It also offers functionality that allows you to convert a normal Angular component to a native web component.

Angular Elements give you an easy way to implement a web standard. There is no smoke and mirrors.

Custom Elements, let you create custom tags in a framework-agnostic way. They let you reuse your Angular components in any webpage. Yes, you can embed Angular Elements inside a React.js or Vue.js page without any knowledge of Angular.

How to Create a Custom Angular Elements?

Custom Elements remove the need to rewrite a widget every-time a new framework pops up.

How do Angular Elements work?

1.      They are self-Bootstrapping.

2.      They actually host the Angular Component inside a Custom Element.

3.      They’re a bridge between the DOM APIs and Angular Components.

4.      Anyone can use your component without having to know Angular.

What are the features of Angular Elements?

The features of Angular Elements -

1.      Self-bootstrapping

2.      Hosts an Angular Component inside a Custom Elements

3.      A bridge between DOM and Angular Components APIs

What are Advantages of Angular Elements?

Advantages of Angular Elements -

1.      Reusability - Reuse components in across your apps

2.      Widgets – You can use Angular components in other environments.

3.      CMS Pages

4.      And many more.

How to Install Angular Elements?

To add support for Angular Elements use the Angular CLI command - ng add.

ng add @angular/elements

What Is “ng add” for Angular Elements?

The “ng add” command is built on schematics. When you run ng add @angular/elements the CLI scans your project and updates your code to support Angular Elements.

It’s automatic. There’s no manual configuration required. 

After successfully added in your project -

Two dependencies are added to the package.json which is the following.

1.      @angular/elements: “^6.0.1

2.      document-register-element: ^1.7.2

It’s automatic. There’s no manual configuration required.

How to create an Angular Element?

Can you show me an example of an Angular Element?

Simply you can create a normal Angular component with inputs & outputs and import this component inside your angular module with helps of @angular/elements.

Now, your elements are ready to use inside a simple HTML page-

<my-custom-elmet message="This is my custom element "></my-custom-elmet>

To learn more, you can watch Rob Wormald’s talk about Angular Elements at ng-conf.