The newline Guide to Angular Universal
In this course I'll show you how to enhance existing Angular application with Angular Universal, how to optimize its performance and what are Server-Side Rendering best practices. You'll see how to improve PageSpeed Insights score from 66 to 95 points!
39 Video Lessons
Published | Updated
Course Preview
What You Will Learn
How to make SEO friendly Angular application
What problems Angular Universal can solve
How to integrate Angular Universal application with MongoDB and Redis cache
Preparing server-specific Angular services and logic paths in the server and browser common code
How to create transfer data between server and browser using TransferState
Importance of optimizing server-side REST calls
How to manipulatie Angular application <title> and <meta> tags
How to Unit test and e2e test Angular Universal application
How to prepare your application for prerendering
In this course, we'll create a complete Angular application that is Server-Side-Rendered with Angular Universal.
The application will be optimized for the best possible performance and will be tuned for real-world production use. For example, we'll use Redis for server-side caching, create protected routes, and get great SEO benefits with a snappy user experience.
This course is 40+ lessons where we walk through a step-by-step tutorial to optimize an Angular app from a Lighthouse score of 66 (the default) to a blazing-fast score of 95 (!)
The problem with "normal" Angular apps is that they don't run until our user has downloaded the entire application - but with SSR, we'll render our Angular app on the server.
The result is that your app will load super-fast, you'll improve your SEO, you will delight your users.
Along the way, we'll learn production deployment techniques like:
- how to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) for global performance and
- how to deploy to Heroku and retrieve data from a MongoDB database
- How to measure and improve metrics like time-to-first-byte and time to first-contentful-paint
- How to add data like internationalization with SSR
- How to manage security and secrets in your SSR build
- How fetch server-side queries from the database
- How to use
TransferState
to eliminate duplicate client-side queries - How to test server-side rendered apps
- How to pre-render static pages
By the end of this course you'll understand how to create Angular apps with real-world, production-level performance.
Course Content
Introduction
Angular Universal and the Era of Single-Page Applications
Introduction to Guide to Angular Universal
INTRODUCTION
Course prerequisites
This lesson answers the questions "What do I need to accomplish the course?" "What software is needed?" "What should I know about Angular and other technologies?" "What should I do to accomplish the course offline?"
INTRODUCTION
Building the app
How Does Angular Work with Heroku and MongoDB?
In this course module, you will build a production-ready Angular application. It will consist of a list of products with pictures, descriptions, and prices. Each product will have a dedicated landing page. You will also develop the functionality of adding products to a list of favorites and displaying that list. You will build a back-end and API to feed your application with data. The data will be retrieved from MongoDB provisioned in your Heroku application.
LESSON
How to Install Angular From the CLI and Add Bootstrap CSS
Most projects start from scratch. This one is not an exception. In this lesson you will initialize the Angular application using CLI, include the Cascading StyleSheet, set up routing and basic components.
LESSON
How to Build and Run an Angular Backend to Test Locally
In this lesson you will prepare the application backend an entry gate for communicating with persistance layer and hosting Angular application bundle.
LESSON
How to Install MongoDB Locally and Import JSON Data
Every application needs a persistence layer. This lesson will show you how to enroll for free Atlas cloud MongoDB instance. You will also feed your database with data.
LESSON
How to Build a MongoDB REST API to Fetch Data
Once the database is set up and ready, you need to establish a connection with it. That's what you're going to do in this part of the course. Apart of that you will create backend API to get list of products and their descriptions.
LESSON
Build MongoDB API With Encryption for PII Data and Auth
We're building software for people, and we need to give them a way to communicate with it. This lesson will show you how to prepare an API for user interaction like loging in and adding products to list of favorites. Moreover you will be introduced to the security essentials like cookies encryption and password hashing.
LESSON
How to Add User Authentication to Angular With MongoDB API
When the backend is ready, it's time for frontend. In this lesson you will integrate user API with Angular. You will implement the user authentication flow.
LESSON
How to Fetch Data From MongoDB and Display it in Angular
Our application would be nothing without the data. In this course part you will display products images, description and prices in your Angular application.
LESSON
How to Deploy an Angular App and Watch Performance
Every journey has some end. At the end of software development is production. It's time to deploy your application to Heroku and test with multiple tools how it performs.
LESSON
Applying Angular Universal
Angular Universal
In the previous module, you've built a fully functional production-ready application. Unfortunately, like other single-page applications, this application has its weaknesses. In this module, you will learn how to address one of them and render HTML content on the server.
LESSON
Server-Side Rendering With Angular Universal Schematics
The easiest way to enhance your Angular project with new functionalities is to use Schematics - a set of instruction for CLI on how to change the project and install new dependencies. Let's do that with Angular Universal and review what Schematics did for us.
LESSON
How to Measure Performance - Angular vs Angular Universal
Once the application is said to be SEO friendly and performance optimized by schemtaics - let's check that in battlefield. In this lesson you will deploy your project to Heroku and measure its performance.
LESSON
How to Add Internationalization to Angular With i18n
Unfortunately, schematics are not a magic wand and they won't solve all of your problems. Sometimes your project needs to be adjusted to do not break Server-Side Rendering process. Here's what might go wrong, and how to address that.
LESSON
How to Add Sitemap.xml and Robots.txt to an Angular App
In this lesson, you will add even more for SEO. Your application deserves robots.txt and proper sitemap.
LESSON
How to Optimize Angular SEO With Title and Meta Tags
Next step in SEO is to set up meta-tags. If you want to know how to do it in Angular, this lesson will help you to find the answer.
LESSON
Noscript
In this lesson, you can see how Angular Universal helps when your user's browser doesn't support JavaScript
LESSON
Browser vs. Server
Retrieve MongoDB Data in Angular Universal With Secrets
In this course module, you will learn how to pass objects and function references from Node.js to Angular Universal sandbox. You will build a service that will be used to connect with MongoDB and perform queries. You will also gain knowledge on how to prepare a server-equivalent of services used in browser-side Angular; and how to improve your application performance thanks to them. You will also make your application fully functional for users with disabled JavaScript.
LESSON
How to Query MongoDB from Angular Universal
One of possible improvements is to perform queries against MongoDB directly from Angular Universal. In this lesson you will create a service which does this job.
LESSON
How to Build Server-Specific Services in Angular Universal
Once your MongoService is in place, you need to prepare a server-equivalent of ProductsService. This service will query MongoService for products list and descriptions and embed those in the HTML rendered by Angular Universal.
LESSON
How to Read HTTP Requests With Cookies in Angular
Next step is to create a server-equivalent of service responsible for user interactions. This lesson will show you how to read HTTP requests in Angular, get cookies from it and decrypt them.
LESSON
How to Make Angular Functional With JavaScript Disabled
Once you know how to read cookies in the Angular Universal app, it's time to learn how to set them up. In this lesson, you will make your application fully functional for users whose browser doesn't support JavaScript at all.
LESSON
Transfering data between server and browser
Send Server Data to Client With Angular TransferState
Say Hello to TransferState, a key-value registry that is passed along with the application bundle, from the server-side angular to the browser-side part of the application. In this lesson you will learn how frontend can get to know what backend has already do (ie retrieving data from DB); thanks to that you can avoid repeating those steps and offload your application backend.
LESSON
Perform Angular HTTP Calls With TransferHttpCacheModule
Next step is to get know a TransferHttpCacheModule, which provides the TransferState functionality "out of the box" for the HTTP calls.
LESSON
How to Handle Slow API Calls in Angular
Long running API calls can affect your application rendering time, that might lead to the SEO disaster. In this lesson you will learn how you can protect your application against such situation.
LESSON
Caching with Redis
How to Install Redis CLI on Windows, Mac, and Heroku
First things first. Let's install the Redis DB on your machine and provision it in the Heroku environment.
LESSON
How to Cache Angular With Redis Node.js Middleware
In this lesson you will create a Node.JS middle-ware, that will be responsible for caching rendered views inside Redis database.
LESSON
5 Angular Performance Optimization Tips
Faster! Faster! Faster! In this lesson you will enable gzip compression, defer the CSS, lazy-load images and more. All to make it faster!
LESSON
Testing
Module Overview
Testing an Angular Universal application can be tricky. In this module, you will learn how to create tests that are specific to Angular Universal applications.
LESSON
How to Mock PLATFORM_ID Value for Angular Unit Testing
How to verify your application behavior in different environments? In this lesson you will get to know how you can stub the PLATFORM_ID injection token and HTTP request, for tests purpose.
LESSON
How to Unit Test Slow API Calls in Angular
Next step is to simulate a long-running API and verify how server-side Angular deals with it. This lesson will demonstrate you how to do that.
LESSON
How to Unit Test Server-Side Services in Angular Karma
Last but not least of your unit tests, should be to verify the server-specific services. In this lesson you will learn how to enforce Karma to run tests against code that includes server-specific objects and libraries.
LESSON
Build Angular End-to-End Unit Tests With TransferState
In this lesson you will learn how you can verify the TransferState registry content in your E2E tests.
LESSON
How to Mock MongDB for Angular End-to-End Unit Tests
This lesson is going to show you how to mock your data-source - MongoDB - for the E2E tests purpose. Thanks to using mongo-unit you will be able to perform actions that changes data in your DB, during E2E testing.
LESSON
Prerendering
Prerendering in Angular
In this module, you'll learn how to adjust the Angular application to be pre-renderable. Such prepared application can be deployed on static hosting like GitHub pages and still be SEO friendly! You will feed your application with data retrieved from MongoDB during the prerendering process.
LESSON
How to Resolve Angular Prerendering Issues
What is prerendering and how Angular Universal supports it? This lesson will answer that questio and show you what steps you need to take, to make your application prerenderable.
LESSON
Summary
After finishing this module, you will know how prerendering works, how to prepare backend for prerendered Angular application and how to utilize MongoDB connection during prerendering process.
LESSON
Summary
Angular --prod Universal Versus Prerender
That was a bumpy ride, but definetely worth it. In this lesson we will summarize what you've learned so far and how ng --prod differentiate from Universal and Prerendered application.
LESSON
Your Instructors
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this course for?
This course is for developers who have an essential exposure to Angular, and want to make a deep dive into the Angular Universal world.
What if I need help?
You can ask us questions anytime through the community Discord channel, starting a discussion in the course, or by sending us a message.