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Angular Cat Wiki

This is a conversion of my Next Cat Wiki app to use Angular and Angular SSR. It is also a solution to a DevChallenges challenge.

Built With

Thoughts

  • Fetch seems to be preferred in Angular 17.
  • NG02801: Angular detected that HttpClient is not configured to use fetch APIs. It's strongly recommended to enable fetch for applications that use Server-Side Rendering for better performance and compatibility. To enable fetch, add the withFetch() to the provideHttpClient() call at the root of the application.
  • Observables are discouraged for simple API requests now. Observables are better when you need to transform data or combine multiple requests.
  • SSR is easy to setup and requires less intervention by developers. You don't have to add the express engine separately anymore.
  • SSR documentation is pretty scarce. Angular.io's SSR guide removed the older Angular Universal implementation details.
  • I have two services to fetch the same data. If you use the AppHttpClientService, the data you fetch will be included in the page source code on first load. If you use ApiHandlerService, the data will be hydrated into the page, but the data will be missing from the initial source code. Error: fetching top breeds will be in the source code instead.
  • The fact that the images of the breed images is close to the fold (on desktop) makes the choice between the two approaches more difficult. It is less important that the breed images be fetched immediately. On a fast connection, the images will probably be hydrated into the DOM before the user has scrolled them into the viewport.
  • Ultimately, it is probably best to just use the ApiHttpClientService so you don't have to worry about the images' visibility on all viewport sizes.
  • If you use localStorage to cache data, you could inject PLATFORM_ID and wrap any localStorage code in a conditional that checks isPlatformBrowser() or you can check the localStorage inside the callback of afterNextRender().
  • I found Next to be a way better option for SSR than Angular SSR. If you knew both, there would have been few reasons to pick Angular over Next. Now, I think this is good enough to stick with Angular versus converting to another framework.
  • I used mergeMap and forkJoin to batch the API requests in the breed component.
  • Chaining multiple sequential fetch requests is not better than using RxJs.
  • However, the mergeMap implementation seems to have negative Typescript implications. The first returned value, breeds, gets added to the hero object. This added data creates the need for extra interfaces or the addition of optional fields to the existing interfaces to type each step of the breed API request. To prevent having to add extra interfaces, you could also add optional return values for certain fields.
  • Diffchecker is an excellent site that can help you compare and contrast different JSON. Using this site, you can determine how the various API responses differ.
  • Breed2 interface is my catch-all interface to work with the various responses in breed.component.ts.
  • Images have a large intrisnic size. This is api-specific and don't think I can do much to mitigate it.
  • I disabled the image size warning in the console. You can remove the provider in app.config.ts to see the warning.
  • There are some slight styling issues from the conversion. There is unused CSS code lingering in some files. I was able to keep most of the HTML formatting in the conversion and only had to make slight alterations. I used the new control flow syntax.
  • I removed Karma, Jasmine and any generated test files. I think Cypress would probably be the quickest option to get testing done quickly. Cypress 13.5 supports Angular 17 component testing.
  • I have looked into Cypress end to end testing with SSR and it doesn't seem like cy.intercept will work. If you use cy.visit instead of cy.render, you can actually think you are testing your SSR application when you are testing the client.
  • Once again, there is a distinct lack of documentation out there and I am still doing more research. Angular Test Library has been updated to test deferred views, but I don't know if it has any testing examples for SSR.
  • I used object-fit: contain globally for all images to preserve the aspect ratio. It is not ideal, as it can make the layout look less uniform, but the pictures look much better.
  • I looked into hiding the API key versus adding it inside the environments folder. This is something that Next does better than Angular. There is very little documentation about hiding API keys and SSR in Angular. I looked into adding a plugin for dotenv and adding an .env file which holds the key that is referenced inside the environments file.
  • @angular-builders/custom-webpack has been updated for Angular 17 but dotenv-webpack has not been updated in a while. I need to investigate more.
  • Since I only needed one input, I used ngModel and didn't save state in the home component. At times, I second-guessed this choice as there were issues with modal functionality. I didn't have as easy access to the input value to pass to the modal component.
  • The modal component uses absolute positioning and this creates problems with the modal blocking the input depending on viewport height. I think my Next application didn't have this problem and I need to investigate what I did differently.
  • If you make the arrow html entities bigger with font-size, you will have a mismatched underline of the link.
  • NgOptimizedImage seems very similar to Next's Legacy Image. A lot of the same attributes carry over.
  • In the Next version, I used Image with HeroImage-md.png. I could do the same with NgOptimizedImage, but right now I use a picture tag with the multiple images for different screen sizes.
  • HeroImage div width is too short on very large screens.
  • Ragdoll and Norwegian Forest Cat are good breeds to test image filtering. Ragdoll has enough pictures where you can refresh many times, and if there are only 5 bottom images, then the duplicate of the main image is gone. This doesn't account for duplicates in the extra images themselves. You need to convert the array to a set and then convert back to an array to eliminate duplicates from the extra image array. The catapi is aware of duplicates, but not much work has been done on the api in a while.
  • The Aegean breed has a duplicate picture in the extra image array. The same photo has a different name.
  • If you didn't use the back arrow, the dynamic details title lingered on the homepage. I injected the title service into the home component to always update the title to AngularCatWiki on page load.
  • CommonModule is no longer imported with components anymore. The new template syntax doesn't require CommonModule. See Github for more.
  • I haven't updated the angular cli package, but I removed the unused CommonModule imports from all components. I only had to import NgClass in the home component.

Continued Development

  • Styling issues - Mobile & other viewport adjustments
  • Accessibility
  • Focus management after navigation - See angular.dev for more
  • Better way to hide api key
  • File Structure - pages folder with breed, benefits, breeds, home and not-found. The rest can stay in components folder.
  • Testing
  • Performance
  • Typescript improvements
  • NgOptimizedImage for the main hero image ?

How to Use

To clone and run this application, you'll need Git and Node.js (which comes with npm) installed on your computer. From your command line:

# Clone this repository
$ git clone https://github.com/jdegand/angular-cat-wiki.git

# Install dependencies
$ npm install

# Need to add / update environment.development.ts file with an apiKey from thecatapi

# Run the app and navigate to localhost:4200
$ npm start

Need to add / update environment.development.ts file

export const environment = {
    production: false,
    apiKey: 'catapi goes here'
};

Useful Resources

  • transform.tools - json to typescript converter
  • Reddit - how to make api call from server side
  • YouTube - Angular 16 Server Side Rendering and Client Side Rendering - Angular Universal
  • Angular.dev - HttpClient
  • YouTube - All About Server-side Rendering w/Angular v16 and Angular Universal
  • Medium - using env to store environment variables in angular
  • YouTube - Learn How to Use Angular Environment Variables with Custom Webpack
  • YouTube - How to chain and wait for multiple API calls in Angular: A Step-by-Step Guide | Angular | LSC
  • YouTube - Sequencial API Calls with Angular: Mastering API Integration
  • Stack Overflow - angular sequential http rest request (concat)
  • Dev.to - how to use mergeMap and forkjoin to handle multiple api requests in angular
  • Medium - angular http calls chain execution with rxjs mergemap
  • Code With Srini - make sequence of http api request using mergemap and forkjoin
  • Stack Overflow - how to catch error in observable forkjoin
  • YouTube - Part 6 Angular 12 Intercept @Input using ngOnChanges | Getters and Setters - Learn from Scratch
  • Medium - how to pass a function to a child component
  • Stack Overflow - angular 2 template driven form access ngForm in component
  • YouTube - Angular Server Side Rendering | Angular SSR | Angular Universal
  • YouTube - Angular 17 SSR - Angular Server Side Rendering in a New Way
  • Stack Overflow - javascript filter for objects
  • PluralSight - how to make type safe http requests in angular