Update Angular1.x vs. Angular 2: Why to update.

AngularJS was perfect in its first version and many mobile app developers have at the first instance not found any need to upgrade to the version 2 of the platform, however, there is more excitement awaiting here.

It’s been over a year since Angular pushed a new version of AngularJS into the market, yet many app development companies are reluctant to migrate to the new version.

Of course, there is the entire rigmarole of coding and transition, but we bring an argument why it is worth making the upgrade from Angular 1.x to Angular 2.

Key Summary

• Overview: The article compares Angular 1.x with Angular 2, emphasizing the improvements in Angular 2 and the benefits of upgrading for modern web development.
• Key Differences:
  • Architecture:
    • Angular 1.x: Uses MVC architecture with two-way data binding, which can cause performance issues in complex applications.
    • Angular 2: Adopts a component-based architecture with unidirectional data flow, improving predictability and efficiency.
  • Language:
    • Angular 1.x: Built with JavaScript, often used with jQuery.
    • Angular 2: Leverages TypeScript for enhanced type safety, better tooling, and maintainability.
  • Performance:
    • Angular 1.x: Slower in large apps due to the digest cycle and two-way binding.
    • Angular 2: Faster with ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation and optimized change detection.
  • Mobile Support:
    • Angular 1.x: Limited mobile optimization, often requiring additional frameworks.
    • Angular 2: Mobile-first design with better performance on resource-constrained devices.
  • Syntax and Structure:
    • Angular 1.x: Relies on controllers and scope, leading to complexity in large projects.
    • Angular 2: Simplifies development with components, directives, and dependency injection.
• Reasons to Update:
  • Modern Features: Angular 2 supports progressive web apps (PWAs), server-side rendering, and modular development.
  • Performance: Significant improvements in load times and runtime efficiency.
  • Future-Proofing: Angular 2+ is actively supported by Google, while Angular 1.x is in maintenance mode.
  • Ecosystem: Integrates seamlessly with Angular CLI, RxJS, and TypeScript libraries.
• Challenges:
  • Requires code rewriting due to architectural differences.
  • Learning curve for TypeScript and new Angular concepts.
  • Migration can be resource-intensive for large Angular 1.x applications.
• Use Cases:
  • Angular 1.x: Best for maintaining simple, legacy applications.
  • Angular 2: Suited for new projects, enterprise apps, or high-performance, scalable applications.
• Conclusion: Upgrading to Angular 2 provides significant performance, scalability, and modern feature benefits, making it a worthwhile investment for developers despite the migration challenges.

The Changes

Components and Directives– Angular 2 is entirely component-based and even the final application is a component of the platform. Components and directives have replaced controllers and scopes. Even the specification for directives has been simplified and will probably further improve.

Input/output – they are the communication channels for components and run in the browser with elements and events.

Content Projection – it is a new transclusion which is aligned with web components standard

Dependency Injection – AngularJs 2 components have their own injector so you no longer have to work with a single injector for the entire application. With an improved dependency injection model, there are more opportunities for component or object-based work. The dependency injection contains –

Injector, which is a set of APIs to inject dependencies, and make dependency injection available

Binding to name the dependencies

Actual dependencies of the object which are generated so they can be injected

Benefits of Angular 2.0

Mobile Support – Though the Ionic framework has always worked well with Angular, the platform offers better mobile support with the version 2. The 1.x version compromised heavily on user experience and application performance in general.

With its in-built mobile-orientation, Angular 2.0 is more geared for cross-platform mobile application development.

Service-side Rendering – Angular 2.0 has a service layer and a render layer which enables it to run comfortably on all environments including even servers and web workers.

Powerful Templates – the new template syntax can be analysed statistically and many directives have been removed. They also integrate better with web components and other elements.

Overall Structure – with faster change detection, template precompilation, view caching and bootstrap time, the framework is extremely fast and efficient.

For the actual upgrade, ngUpgrade makes Angular 1 and Angular 2 components interoperable and new components are written in ES2015 or TypeScript, which makes executing Windows apps also easy to execute on this platform.

The big step forward with Angular 2 is that the frontend is completely made of components and directives and all features from the JavaScript libraries are fully usable.

Angular 2 and TypeScript present opportunity for frontend object-oriented programming and the declarative nature makes it comprehensive.