Angular-CLI

Prototype of a CLI for Angular 2 applications based on the ember-cli project.

Note

This project is very much still a work in progress.

The CLI is now in beta. If you wish to collaborate while the project is still young, check out our issue list.

Prerequisites

The generated project has dependencies that require

• Node 4 or greater.
• Typings v1 or greater.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Generating a New Project
• Generating Components, Directives, Pipes and Services
• Generating a Route
• Creating a Build
• Environments
• Bundling
• Running Unit Tests
• Running End-to-End Tests
• Deploying the App via GitHub Pages
• Linting and formatting code
• Support for offline applications
• Commands autocompletion
• CSS preprocessor integration
• 3rd Party Library Installation
• Updating angular-cli
• Known Issues
• Development Hints for hacking on angular-cli

Installation

BEFORE YOU INSTALL: please read the prerequisites

npm install -g angular-cli

Usage

ng --help

Generating and serving an Angular2 project via a development server

ng new PROJECT_NAME
cd PROJECT_NAME
ng serve

Navigate to http://localhost:4200/. The app will automatically reload if you change any of the source files.

You can configure the default HTTP port and the one used by the LiveReload server with two command-line options :

ng serve --port 4201 --live-reload-port 49153

Generating Components, Directives, Pipes and Services

You can use the ng generate (or just ng g) command to generate Angular components:

ng generate component my-new-component
ng g component my-new-component # using the alias

# components support relative path generation
# if in the directory src/app/feature/ and you run
ng g component new-cmp
# your component will be generated in src/app/feature/new-cmp
# but if you were to run
ng g component ../newer-cmp
# your component will be generated in src/app/newer-cmp

You can find all possible blueprints in the table below:

Scaffold	Usage
Component	ng g component my-new-component
Directive	ng g directive my-new-directive
Pipe	ng g pipe my-new-pipe
Service	ng g service my-new-service
Class	ng g class my-new-class
Interface	ng g interface my-new-interface
Enum	ng g enum my-new-enum

Generating a route

You can generate a new route with the following command (note the singular used in hero):

ng generate route hero

This will create a folder which will contain the hero component and related test and style files.

The generated route will also be registered with the parent component's @RouteConfig decorator.

By default the route will be designated as a lazy route which means that it will be loaded into the browser when needed, not upfront as part of a bundle.

In order to visually distinguish lazy routes from other routes the folder for the route will be prefixed with a + per the above example the folder will be named +hero. This is done in accordance with the style guide.

The default lazy nature of routes can be turned off via the lazy flag (--lazy false)

There is an optional flag for skip-router-generation which will not add the route to the parent component's @RouteConfig decorator.

Creating a build

ng build

The build artifacts will be stored in the dist/ directory.

Environments

At build time, the src/app/environment.ts will be replaced by either config/environment.dev.ts or config/environment.prod.ts, depending on the current cli environment. The resulting file will be dist/app/environment.ts.

Environment defaults to dev, but you can generate a production build via the -prod flag in either ng build -prod or ng serve -prod.

You can also add your own env files other than dev and prod by creating a config/environment.{NAME}.ts and use them by using the --env=NAME flag on the build/serve commands.

Bundling

Builds created with the -prod flag via ng build -prod or ng serve -prod bundle all dependencies into a single file, and make use of tree-shaking techniques.

Running unit tests

ng test

Tests will execute after a build is executed via Karma, and it will automatically watch your files for changes.

You can run tests a single time via --watch=false, and turn off building of the app via --build=false (useful for running it at the same time as ng serve).

WARNING: On Windows, ng test is hitting a file descriptor limit (see angular#977). The solution for now is to instead run ng serve and ng test --build=false in separate console windows.

Running end-to-end tests

ng e2e

Before running the tests make sure you are serving the app via ng serve.

End-to-end tests are ran via Protractor.

Deploying the app via GitHub Pages

You can deploy your apps quickly via:

ng github-pages:deploy --message "Optional commit message"

This will do the following:

• creates GitHub repo for the current project if one doesn't exist
• rebuilds the app in production mode at the current HEAD
• creates a local gh-pages branch if one doesn't exist
• moves your app to the gh-pages branch and creates a commit
• edit the base tag in index.html to support github pages
• pushes the gh-pages branch to github
• returns back to the original HEAD

Creating the repo requires a token from github, and the remaining functionality relies on ssh authentication for all git operations that communicate with github.com. To simplify the authentication, be sure to setup your ssh keys.

If you are deploying a user or organization page, you can instead use the following command:

ng github-pages:deploy --user-page --message "Optional commit message"

This command pushes the app to the master branch on the github repo instead of pushing to gh-pages, since user and organization pages require this.

Linting and formatting code

You can lint your app code by running ng lint. This will use the lint npm script that in generated projects uses tslint.

You can modify the these scripts in package.json to run whatever tool you prefer.

Support for offline applications

The index.html file includes a commented-out code snippet for installing the angular2-service-worker. This support is experimental, please see the angular/mobile-toolkit project and https://mobile.angular.io/ for documentation on how to make use of this functionality.

Commands autocompletion

To turn on auto completion use the following commands:

For bash:

ng completion >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

For zsh:

ng completion >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Windows users using gitbash:

ng completion >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

CSS Preprocessor integration

We support all major CSS preprocessors:

• sass (node-sass)
• less (less)
• compass (compass-importer + node-sass)
• stylus (stylus)

To use one just install for example npm install node-sass and rename .css files in your project to .scss or .sass. They will be compiled automatically.

The Angular2App's options argument has sassCompiler, lessCompiler, stylusCompiler and compassCompiler options that are passed directly to their respective CSS preprocessors.

3rd Party Library Installation

The installation of 3rd party libraries are well described at our Wiki Page

Updating angular-cli

To update angular-cli to a new version, you must update both the global package and your project's local package.

Global package:

npm uninstall -g angular-cli
npm cache clean
npm install -g angular-cli@latest

Local project package:

rm -rf node_modules dist tmp
npm install --save-dev angular-cli@latest
ng init

Running ng init will check for changes in all the auto-generated files created by ng new and allow you to update yours. You are offered four choices for each changed file: y (overwrite), n (don't overwrite), d (show diff between your file and the updated file) and h (help).

Carefully read the diffs for each code file, and either accept the changes or incorporate them manually after ng init finishes.

The main cause of errors after an update is failing to incorporate these updates into your code.

You can find more details about changes between versions in CHANGELOG.md.

Known issues

This project is currently a prototype so there are many known issues. Just to mention a few:

• All blueprints/scaffolds are in TypeScript only, in the future blueprints in all dialects officially supported by Angular will be available.
• On Windows you need to run the build and serve commands with Admin permissions, otherwise the performance is not good.
• The initial installation as well as ng new take too long because of lots of npm dependencies.
• Many existing ember addons are not compatible with Angular apps built via angular-cli.
• When you ng serve remember that the generated project has dependencies that require Node 4 or greater.

Development Hints for hacking on angular-cli

Working with master

git clone https://github.com/angular/angular-cli.git
cd angular-cli
npm link

npm link is very similar to npm install -g except that instead of downloading the package from the repo, the just cloned angular-cli/ folder becomes the global package. Any changes to the files in the angular-cli/ folder will immediately affect the global angular-cli package, allowing you to quickly test any changes you make to the cli project.

Now you can use angular-cli via the command line:

ng new foo
cd foo
npm link angular-cli
ng serve

npm link angular-cli is needed because by default the globally installed angular-cli just loads the local angular-cli from the project which was fetched remotely from npm. npm link angular-cli symlinks the global angular-cli package to the local angular-cli package. Now the angular-cli you cloned before is in three places: The folder you cloned it into, npm's folder where it stores global packages and the angular-cli project you just created.

Please read the official npm-link documentation and the npm-link cheatsheet for more information.

License

MIT