The new DSpace UI developer team decided to implement the new user interface with the  Angular2 is being implemented on the widely used Angular client side framework. In addition to delivering a more responsive user experience,  client side frameworks allows allow for a more rapid development cycle. Angular is widely used and SEO

Angular is widely used, has To ensure that the resulting user interface will still be able to be indexed by search engines

Learning Resources

General

• https://angular.io/styleguide - The official Angular2 for TypeScript Style Guide
• https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/ - The official documentation for Angular 2 (with TypeScript). Includes a "5-min quick start", "step-by-step guide" and official API docs
• https://github.com/angular/angular - The official codebase for Angular 2. Where to submit issues, follow the code progression, etc.
• http://angularjs.blogspot.com/ - The Angular blog, which contains updates and blog posts from the Angular team.
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/angular - Google Group for Angular 1 or 2 discussions.
• https://angularair.com/ - A live video podcast all about Angular
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/npm-check-updates - A npm package for dependency management
• Scotch.io has a bunch of articles on various angular 2 topics

Typescript

The UI code is built in TypeScript, a typed super set of JavaScript, that was developed specifically for the implementation of sizable web applications. In fact Angular itself is developed in TypeScript.

The UI works with the DSpace REST API to access and modify data. It relies on RxJS  to manage control flow which is driven by the (asynchronous) communication between the two applications The @ngrx package helps maintain a predictable state representation.

The new UI uses Angular Universal to render initial page requests on the server side,  which greatly improves the initial page load time. As a nice benefit, search engines requesting pages do not have to deal with client side page rendering. Crawlers working through a list of URLs will always be presented with a page rendered on the server.

Node.js is the server technology used with JavaScript web application and thus with Angular.  As an asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime, Node is designed to build scalable network applications like web based user interfaces. 

Npm stands for Node Package Manager. In fact installation instruction for the user interface at GitHub essentially consist of the command 'npm install',  followed by 'npm start' to start a local server.

Typescript

• This wiki page explains the rationale for using typescript in more detail
• The Official documentation for the TypeScript language includes http://www.typescriptlang.org/ - The official documentation for the TypeScript language. Includes links to sample code, as well as a live in-browser editor/samples.
• See also the TypeScript Guidelines on the Prototype's wiki

RXJS

RxJS is used as part of angular 2 to deal with asynchronous data. A good grasp of RxJS is essential to write robust angular 2 code.

• A general introduction to Reactive Programming
• There are a bunch of resources on RxJS’ github
• Decision trees to find which operator to use when creating new sequences or using existing sequences → these are very useful during development

Universal

Universal is the angular sub-project that allows for angular apps to be rendered server-side

Angular

• Official Angular.io site -  with documentation, quick start, and API references, and a style guide
• Angular @ GitHub - code base and place to submit issues
• Getting Started Video Tutorial by Deborah Kurata
• Angular Blog -  updates and blog posts from the Angular team.
• Angular Forum - Google Discussion Group
• Scotch.io - article collection and HowTos

Other Packages

• RxJS - JavaScript implementation of ReactiveX, which describes itself as an API that combines the Observer pattern with iterators and functional programming. It facilitates the type of event/data driven programming that is common in web applications. The RxJS GitHub repo contains Resources and Links to Tutorials.; André Staltz wrote a good introduction to Reactive Programming

• @ngrx is an implementation of Redux for Angular 2. The main Redux documentation describes the general concepts. Angular 2 — Introduction to Redux is an Angular specific how to.  Getting Started with Redux is a 2h video course on egghead

• ngx-translate - supports multilingual text display

Node.js and Npm

• node.js - official site
• npm - official site
• npm-check-updates - npm package dependency management

Angular Universal

• Official Angular Universal Site
• Here‘s a high level explanation
• Universal GitHub - with documentation and a few videos
• Here‘s a high level document explaining it
• There are some videos on their github page
• William Welling has a test project to experiment with Angular Universal.

Redux

Redux is a set of design-patterns to manage state in a javascript application. 

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Additional DSpace 7 Resources

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