Introduction to the Building Angular applications with NX

Speaker introduction and course overview

What is NX?

Difference between Repository and Monorepo

Repository vs Monorepo

Angular and NX - Why?

Advantages of NX

Disadvantages of NX

First module summary

Introduction

Second module introduction

Short lesson about NX installation methods

NX installation

A quick overview of the default suggested directory structure of NX repository.

NX repository folder layout

Second module summary

How to install NX

How to build a simple application and how to create libraries in NX

Third module introduction

Adding the first app

Adding the first library

Code session for the first application and library in NX.

Time tracker code

Third module summary

The first NX Angular application

What else you can keep in monorepo...? Multiple apps using multiple frameworks, built-in Storybook and Cypress configuration

Fourth module introduction

How can you add more apps to monorepo, which frameworks are available at the time, and advantages of keeping them together

Built-in app types in NX

What are buildable and publishable libraries

Built-in library types in NX

Storybook

End-to-end testing

Fourth module summary

More built-in NX features

This module will present a real-life example of an NX mono repository with multiple libraries and three applications.

Fifth module introduction

Presenting the current module's plan, highlighting crucial backend details for the frontend to illustrate the problem domain.

Backend overview

How to migrate simple existing applications to NX

Migrating backend app to NX

How to extract library with DTOs classes from backend app and prepare it to be shared with frontend application

Extracting shared DTO library

Let's look at how our final application should look like

Design overview

Add new Angular apps to the existing NX repository

Adding new Angular apps to existing monorepo

Adding Storybook to monorepo - different approach

Using previously configured Storybook in this lesson we will create and prepare a few common components that later we’ll use in apps.

Adding common components. Card, Button, Input, List, ListItem

Adding a domain library for RoomList, RoomBackground and RoomTimelineList that I missed in previous lessons

Constructing the services of the application

Constructing the application - Services

Constructing the Admin application

Constructing the Room application

How to prepare the application to work offline

Preparing the Room applications to work offline

Summary of building a real-life application with NX

Lessons learned and homework

Building a real life application with NX

Sixth module introduction

What is the dependency graph in NX, and how does it help you with developer experience

Dependency graph - what is it?

Why it’s important to keep the dependencies organized

Importance of keeping dependencies in order

How to run unit tests and lint only on the affected parts of the dependency graph

Affected

How to deal with the most common examples of circular dependencies

Dealing with circular dependencies

Sixth module summary

Dependency graph

Seventh module introduction

How to automatically migrate simple applications to the NX mono repository

Automatic migration of existing applications

How to manually migrate complex applications to the NX mono repository

Manual migration of existing applications

What may be the problem during migration of big, stale existing codebases

Analysis of potential problems in migration of big existing codebases

Tips. The migration plan

Why defining a target architecture may be an important step of the migration process

Tips. Target architecture

Seventh module summary

Migrating existing applications to NX

What you have learned from this course

Contact info and final words from the author

Final words

Summary

### Challenges and solutions in building large Angular apps

In large Angular applications, developers face several significant challenges. One major issue is managing complexity. These apps have lots of components, services, and modules that all need to work together smoothly. Keeping everything organized and easy to understand can be tough, especially with a big team.

Another problem is build times. As the app grows, it can take longer and longer for changes to show up during development. This can slow down the development process and make it harder to stay productive.

Dependency management is another headache. This involves making sure all the different parts of the app work well together and play nicely with outside libraries. 

### Tool limitations

Even experienced teams can struggle with managing large Angular applications without using the right tools. Organizing numerous components, services, and modules becomes challenging without tools that aid in clarity and team collaboration. Utilizing appropriate tools is key for experienced teams to successfully navigate the complexities of large Angular projects.

### Fixing problems with NX

NX offers several benefits for managing large Angular applications. It helps reduce the time it takes to build projects and keeps code well-organized by managing dependencies and structuring code into reusable parts. This makes it easier to maintain and expand applications over time.

One of NX's strengths is its ability to speed up builds. It does this by remembering previous build results and doing multiple tasks at the same time. This saves developers time and lets them make changes quickly.

NX also comes with tools for testing and checking code quality. It works well with common testing tools and helps keep code clean and consistent. This catches mistakes early and ensures code stays high-quality.

Furthermore, NX makes it easy to work together on projects. It keeps all code and shared parts in one place, making it simpler to share code between different projects or teams. This improves teamwork, reduces problems with combining code, and makes development smoother overall.

Comprehensive guide to Angular and NX: Build, migrate, and decompose your Applications

Learn how to create and maintain Angular applications using NX. 
Designed for Angular developers, this course covers best practices, improving workflow, and migrating existing applications to NX. 
Discover how to configure tools like Cypress for end-to-end testing and Storybook for UI component development. 
By the end of this course, you will have the knowledge and experience to work comfortably with NX on a daily basis.

Building Angular applications with NX

Build a simple time tracker application using NX monorepo.

Create a real-life NX monorepo with three applications. The main goal of these applications is to display the schedule for conference rooms on screens mounted to the doors of the respective rooms.

Build an admin panel as one of the applications to manage the schedule data for the conference rooms.

Use NX graph feature to visualize application architecture.

What is a monorepo approach and how it might help you

Differences between Angular CLI projects and NX projects

How to create Angular applications using NX

How to add Cypress and Storybook to your NX monorepo

How to migrate existing Angular applications to NX monorepo

What is a dependency graph and how to use it to save your time

How to prepare migration even for big and complicated projects

I've prepared a simple backend application in NestJS to organize our work in this module. Suppose you have never heard of NestJS, no worries. It's pretty simple, and it looks like Angular.

The most important thing to know about any backend when you're a front-end developer is what you can get from the endpoints. In NestJS, endpoint declaration is contained in controllers. Our backend has two of them.

import {Body, Controller, Get, Post} from '@nestjs/common';
import {map, Observable} from "rxjs";
import {RoomsDao} from "./db/rooms-dao";
import {RoomConverterService} from "./room-converter/room-converter.service";
import {RoomDtoConverterService} from "./room-dto-converter/room-dto-converter.service";
import {RoomDto} from "./dtos/roomDto";

@Controller('rooms')
export class RoomsController {

    constructor(
        private readonly dao: RoomsDao,
        private readonly roomConverter: RoomConverterService,
        private readonly roomDtoConverter: RoomDtoConverterService
    ) {
    }

    @Get()
    getRooms(): Observable<Array<RoomDto>> {
        return this.dao.getRooms()
            .pipe(
                map(rooms => this.roomDtoConverter.convertMany(rooms))
            );
    }

    @Post()
    addRoom(@Body() dto: RoomDto): Observable<void> {
        const room = this.roomConverter.convert(dto);
        return this.dao.addRoom(room)
    }

}

There are two endpoints, one to create a new room and the second to get all created rooms. So, for example, if you send a request 

, it should return you a list of rooms. Notice that both endpoints use 

 request body type. Later, this type is converted to something more suitable for the domain. Data Transfer Objects are used in my backend application only to transfer data, as always should be.

import {Body, Controller, Get, Post, Query} from '@nestjs/common';
import {MeetingsDao} from "./db/meetings-dao";
import {map, Observable} from "rxjs";
import {MeetingDto} from "./dtos/meetingDto"; // <- look how nice it looks like
import {MeetingDtoConverterService} from "./meeting-dto-converter/meeting-dto-converter.service";
import {MeetingConverterService} from "./meeting-converter/meeting-converter.service";

@Controller('meetings')
export class MeetingsController {

    constructor(private readonly meetingsDao: MeetingsDao,
                private readonly dtoConverter: MeetingDtoConverterService,
                private readonly meetingConverter: MeetingConverterService) {
    }

    @Get()
    getMeetings(@Query("roomId") roomId: string): Observable<Array<MeetingDto>> {
        console.log(roomId)
        return this.meetingsDao.getMeetings(roomId)
            .pipe(
                map(meetings => this.dtoConverter.convertMany(meetings))
            );
    }

    @Post()
    addMeeting(@Body() dto: MeetingDto): Observable<void> {
        const meeting = this.meetingConverter.convert(dto);
        return this.meetingsDao.addMeeting(meeting);
    }

}

---
title: Backend overview 
description: Presenting the current module's plan, highlighting crucial backend details for the frontend to illustrate the problem domain.
code: https://gitlab.com/fullstackio/books/newline-course-apps/building-angular-applications-with-nx-app/-/tree/main/manuscript/code/04.02-backend?ref_type=heads
privateVideoUrl: https://stream.mux.com/800wfd7sDkXXXN6KudYpSREwLM9hOuelXP5GVh1ebMYY.m3u8
---

I've prepared a simple backend application in NestJS to organize our work in this module. Suppose you have never heard of NestJS, no worries. It's pretty simple, and it looks like Angular.

The most important thing to know about any backend when you're a front-end developer is what you can get from the endpoints. In NestJS, endpoint declaration is contained in controllers. Our backend has two of them.

## Rooms

```typescript { actualFilename=../../../manuscript/code/04.02-backend/src/rooms/rooms.controller.ts endChar=971 endLine=33 startChar=0 startLine=1 statedFilename=src/rooms/rooms.controller.ts url=https&#x3A;//gitlab.com/fullstackio/books/building-angular-applications-with-nx/module_05/lesson_05.02/.../../manuscript/code/04.02-backend/src/rooms/rooms.controller.ts }
import {Body, Controller, Get, Post} from '@nestjs/common';
import {map, Observable} from "rxjs";
import {RoomsDao} from "./db/rooms-dao";
import {RoomConverterService} from "./room-converter/room-converter.service";
import {RoomDtoConverterService} from "./room-dto-converter/room-dto-converter.service";
import {RoomDto} from "./dtos/roomDto";

@Controller('rooms')
export class RoomsController {

    constructor(
        private readonly dao: RoomsDao,
        private readonly roomConverter: RoomConverterService,
        private readonly roomDtoConverter: RoomDtoConverterService
    ) {
    }

    @Get()
    getRooms(): Observable<Array<RoomDto>> {
        return this.dao.getRooms()
            .pipe(
                map(rooms => this.roomDtoConverter.convertMany(rooms))
            );
    }

    @Post()
    addRoom(@Body() dto: RoomDto): Observable<void> {
        const room = this.roomConverter.convert(dto);
        return this.dao.addRoom(room)
    }

}
```

There are two endpoints, one to create a new room and the second to get all created rooms. So, for example, if you send a request `GET http://localhost:3000/rooms`, it should return you a list of rooms. Notice that both endpoints use `RoomDto` as a type returned by the `GET` endpoint and `POST` request body type. Later, this type is converted to something more suitable for the domain. Data Transfer Objects are used in my backend application only to transfer data, as always should be.

galczo5

I have prepared for you a backend application that we will use to migrate it to

and then we will write two front-end applications that we will use that backend

In this lesson we will do a short overview what we have inside how to start

so on. The application is using an sjs as backend framework if you have never

no worries it's very similar to Angela so it will look familiar for you. Let's

SRC folder so let's open it and similar to Angela we have main.ts file so let's

As you can see we have putstrap function and similar to Angela we have app

what is inside app module. In the app module we have two imports, two rooms and

app controller and two providers, app service and fake database latency service

what is inside app controller first. Controls are very simple so first of all

hello here it means that the endpoint will be exposed as hello and then I have

get so I will have get hello endpoint that will return a simple string. Let's

module and let's check what is inside rooms and meetings modules. So let's

As you can see we have a new module that imports fake database module. It has

rooms controller and few providers. So let's start again with controllers.

It's a bit more complicated so we have endpoint called rooms. It has two

We've got you can get the list of all rooms. Room is described by room dto

check in a moment and the post one is used to create a new room. So let's check

room dto. So our room will have ID, name and image. Let's go back to app module

check what is inside meetings module. So let's check meetings controller and as

it's very simple we have two methods we have get and post again to get all the

so it's a query parameter room ID and post to create a new meeting and we have

here it contains ID room ID name of the room house date from and date to. Let's

meetings module and check what is inside providers. So we have two providers we

converter service and meeting converters service. So meeting dto converter

service that converts meeting to meeting dto and the second service does the

in reverse direction so we are mapping meeting dto to meeting starting the app

First of all we need to install all necessary dependencies so we are install

As you can see we have our endpoints exposed so we have our hello rooms that

meetings that contains get and post and basically that's it it's a very simple

in-memory database so nothing really complicated and I want to encourage you to

because if you like angular I bet you will like netjs.