Friday, September 29, 2017

Communication between Sibling components in Angular

Communication or data exchange between component is pretty common scenario in angular development. We know the property binding and event binding can be implemented for hierarchical communication, i.e to pass data from parent to child component and vice versa. We can implement common service scenario when there is need to communicate among sibling components.

Now, the question is can we implement same solution for parent child communication? The answer is yes, we can because service in angular is singleton in nature. So, it is single source of truth.
Now, let’s implement common service scenario as example.

Step 1) Create multiple component and subscribe common service in target component

Here is example code for that. We will create “SharedService” shortly. Here is code for “Work1” component.

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { SharedService } from '../services/SharedService'

@Component({
  selector: 'work1',
  template: `
  <input type="text" name="txtName" [(ngModel)]="name">
  <input type="button" name="Click" value="Click" (click)="refresh()">`
})

export class Work1 {
  name : string;
  constructor(private _sharedService: SharedService ){

  }
  refresh(){
    this._sharedService.publishData(this.name);
  }

}


Here the idea is, when user will click refresh, it will call one function in shared service. The function is responsible to push the data in an observable stream. As soon as service will push the data to stream, the subscriber of the stream will get notification.

Let’s create another component called “Work2”

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { SharedService } from '../services/SharedService'

@Component({
  selector: 'work2',
  template: `{{name}}`
})
export class Work2 {
  name : string;

  constructor(private _sharedService : SharedService){

    this._sharedService.name$.subscribe(
      data => {
          this.name = data;
      });
  }
}


Here, you can see that we are subscribing “name” observable in SharedService.  So, when there will be any change of “name” variable then the code within constructor should trigger.

Step2) Create common service.

Now, we will implement the common service which will function as mediator/event publisher in implementation.

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { Subject }    from 'rxjs/Subject';

@Injectable()
export class SharedService {

  private name = new Subject<string>(); 
  name$ = this.name.asObservable();

  publishData(data: string) {
    this.name.next(data);
  }

}

The pushData() function is responsible to push the current data to “name$” observable stream.
So, here is final output 




Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Few Interesting facts of Attribute routing

We of us know that Attribute Routing has introduced to enhance flexibility of routing in ASP.NET MVC. So, here is my ItemController which marked as “Item” using routeprefix attribute and GetItem(int Id) action is decorated using Route attribute. So, to invoke 
GetItem, the route is “/Item/1” 

    [RoutePrefix("Item")]
    public class ItemController : Controller
    {

        [Route("{id}")]
        public void GetItem(int Id)
        {

        }
    }

Now, let’s think some situation where we want to override behavior of RoutePrefix. We have defined GetItemInfo() action with Route attribute prefixed by “~/” which implies that we need to specify “Item” to invoke the action. So, the route to access GetItemInfo() is
      
    [RoutePrefix("Item")]
    public class ItemController : Controller
    {

        [Route("~/SpecialItem/{id}")]
        public void GetItemInfo(int Id)
        {

        }
    }

Set Global Default Route

We know that, in time of route initialization in config file we can specify default route. Here is another way to implement same. Just specify “~/” in any action to mark the action as default action.

So Route to access GetItemInfo() is : /

    [RoutePrefix("Item")]
    public class ItemController : Controller
    {
        [Route("~/")]
        public void GetItemInfo()
        {

        }
    }


Now, What if we mark more than one action as default action? You will experience following exception.


Set Default route to specific RoutePrefix

If we place Empty string(“”) to some action, it will mark as default route for that RoutePrefix. So, In following example GetItemInfo() is default route under “Item” RoutePrefix.

So, to Invoke GetItemInfo() the route is “/Item”

    [RoutePrefix("Item")]
    public class ItemController : Controller
    {
        [Route("")]
        public void GetItemInfo()
        {

        }
    }

Here is another way to set default route. 

  RoutePrefix("Item")]
  [Route("{action=GetItemInfo}")]
    public class ItemController : Controller
    {
        public void GetItemInfo()
        {
        }
    }

Route matching by pattern

Using attribute routing, we can pick route by pattern. Now, all routes ended with “info” suffix will map to GetItemInfo() action. So, one sample route could be “/Item/anyinfo”

[RoutePrefix("Item")]
   
    public class ItemController : Controller
    {
        [Route("{*info}")]
        public void GetItemInfo()
        {

        }
    }

Set priority to route

We know that if there are multiple action mapping to same route, we will get exception. To get rid of from this situation, we can specify “Order”. In following example we specified Order in “Route” attribute to action. The route “Item/get/id” is mapping to both GetItemInfo() and GetAnotherItemInfo().

public class ItemController : Controller
    {
        [Route("get/{id}", Order =0)]
        public void GetItemInfo(int Id)
        {

        }

        [Route("get/{id}", Order = 1)]
        public void GetAnotherItemInfo(int Id)
        {

        }

    }

If we do not specify “Order” it will throw this exception.


MVC, register low order route value at first, we Once we go with “item/get/1” it will hit GetItemInfo() action.




Sunday, April 2, 2017

Evolution of AJAX World


If you have started you carrier around 7-10 years back as web developer then probably you have experienced the evaluation practically.

Because of huge advantage of AJAX, more or less 70-80 % of modern web application has adapted this technology. The new style of AJAX implementation came in market so quickly that it’s sometime hard to remember what things were before that?

Anyway, Long ago, Netscape added a feature in browser called live script which was capable to give flavor of offline processing like form validation in client side and bit more. Slowly Live script became JavaScript with more functionality and flexibility.

The inception of DynamicHTML has started in development world, slowly XML gain its popularity in AJAX world when Microsoft added a small function in IE5 to perform XMLHttpRequest call to server.

The classic AJAX using XMLHttpRequest

This is classic style to make AJAX call using vanilla JavaScript. If you worked in very old ASP, JSP or PHP application, probably you are familiar with this style of AJAX call.

var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
       // Typical action to be performed when the document is ready:
       document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = xhttp.responseText;
    }
};
xhttp.open("GET", "yourfilename.extension", true);
xhttp.send();

Oh, did I miss something? Yes, we need to detect browser prior to AJAX call, Just to make sure we are using proper XMLHttpRequest object. Yes, XMLHttpRequest object is browser specific.

JQuery changed the whole game

Then JQuery came in market, it played major role to change face of client side app development.  It combine and packed the above code into few lines and introduce the concept of Callback.

$.ajax({url: "yoururl.com", success: function(result){
        //enjoy with result variable
    }});

And that’s all, simple, compact, no code smell and maintainable. Now, in mean time other library too started wrapping classic XMLHttpRequest request using very similar syntax.

So, as a result the concept of callback has introduced in development world. The moto of callback is, call me once you have prepared the result, or call error in mess!.

Let’s return promise rather than actual result

People started to realize that, as it is asynchronous call, it should return something by which we can take decision. Let’s give some example. The below code is based on promise and then callback function.

requestSomeData("http://example.com ") // returns a promise for the response

    .then(function(response){ // ‘then’ is used to provide a promise handler
    
    return JSON.parse(response.body); // parse the body
    
   }) // returns a promise for the parsed body

    .then(function(data){
   
    return data.something; // get the price

   }) // returns a promise for the price

    .then(function(price){ // print out the price when it is fulfilled

        //do something with the data

  });

We can consider this as fully asynchronous execution plan, even if my JSON.parse() take huge time, the execution flow will not hang the thread because I have attached then callback to ensure that someone will take care once parse completed.

Angular and Other library utilize it best

Angular 1.X introduced a way to sync all asyn call using “$q” service. This is huge power to developer to process more than one asynchronous call and print consolidated result.

Want to have more control on AJAX call? Use Observable.

RxJs introduced the concept called Observable to have more grip on AJAX call. Let’s think that we need to cancel an AJAX call in middle. Assume, the situation where need to handle multiple AJAX call. Observable is preferred than promise here.

So, an observable is like a stream and allow to pass zero or more events where the callback is called for each event. The Observable covers more including promise.
For more info, please check Observable in Angular2

    









Saturday, April 1, 2017

Learning Angular2 ? Here you map yourself !


What is new in angular2?
               Let's see, do I really need to learn!


Advantages of angular2
               If there, industry will adapt quickly and I have to spend some amount of time to learn. Good advantages are bad news for "coder by incident" Engineer :)


Does typescript really need in angular2?
               It could be gossip, let's check reality. Oh!! People are recommending to use typescript, so I have to learn it.


Setting up typescript environment and start Hello World (before that bit struggle with NPM)
               All YouTube tutorial are using Visual Studio Code, but I want to setup in my Visual Studio Enterprise edition :)


Let’s setup angular2 in Visual Studio
               Spent good amount of time in old angular2 website of Google. Setting up typings.js, common.js, tsconfig.js etc finally with webpack, no idea! What is happening! Confused!!



Try angular2 cli or inbuilt project template with ASP.NET Core 1.0
               Feel that ASP.NET Core 1.0 template is best solution, almost 0 setup and production ready architecture :)


Learn architecture of angular2
               Let’s hands on by writing baby component and understand architecture. Learn data binding, routing, Template, directory bla bla...


Dependency injection in angular2
               Oh.. Not much change with angular 1.X, easy to pick up if u know 1.x


Now, let's implement in memory CRUD/TODO app. And here I am...