Sometimes you need to load data from an API before your Angular application can be initialized. I recently had such problem - in this case I had to get settings from the backend server. You may load the data in main component, but then it’s hard to make it available for all other components. It’s much better to hook into initialization process. Let’s see how to do it.

What is an APP_INITIALIZER in Angular

APP_INITIALIZER is described in the documentation as a function, which will be executed when application is initialized. It means you can set it up as a factory in providers section of your AppModule class and the application will wait until it completes.

Example

I will create a simple app, that will load a random Chuck Norris joke from http://www.icndb.com/api (yes, there is an API for that!) and make it available for all other components.

ng new chuck

Joke Provider

First we need a provider, which will return a Promise , which will be resolved when the joke request completed:

@ Injectable () export class JokesProvider { private joke : JokeModel = null ; constructor ( private http : Http ) { } public getJoke () : JokeModel { return this . joke ; } load () { return new Promise (( resolve , reject ) => { this . http . get ( 'https://api.icndb.com/jokes/random' ) . map ( res => res . json ()) . subscribe ( response => { this . joke = response [ 'value' ]; resolve ( true ); }) }) } }

You can read more about Promise object in the MDN web docs.

There are three interesting things here:

private property joke - it will store the current joke public function getJoke() - it makes the current joke available for other parts of the application load() - it’s a function, which we will execute in a moment from the app init process

## AppModule - creating jokes factory We need to hook into application init process and load the random joke using JokesProvider . To do that, we have to create jokesProviderFactory in the app.module.ts file:

export function jokesProviderFactory ( provider : JokesProvider ) { return () => provider . load (); }

Now, it’s time to instruct Angular to use it in the init process. I have added APP_INITIALIZER to providers section of @NgModule :

@ NgModule ({ declarations : [ AppComponent ], imports : [ BrowserModule , HttpModule ], providers : [ JokesProvider , { provide : APP_INITIALIZER , useFactory : jokesProviderFactory , deps : [ JokesProvider ], multi : true } ], bootstrap : [ AppComponent ] }) export class AppModule { }

Now, if you start the application, you can see the request is being made to get the random joke:

Using loaded joke in component

If you want to use the data we have loaded, you simply inject the JokesProvider in the components constructor and use the getJoke() function:

@ Component ({ selector : 'app-root' , templateUrl : './app.component.html' , styleUrls : [ './app.component.css' ] }) export class AppComponent implements OnInit { title = 'app' ; jokeModel : JokeModel ; constructor ( jokesProvider : JokesProvider ) { this . jokeModel = jokesProvider . getJoke (); } ngOnInit () { console . log ( "AppComponent: OnInit()" ); } }

Next, let’s modify the template to show random joke:

<h1> Joke of the day: </h1> <p> {{jokeModel.joke}} </p>

And here’s the result:

Project on Github

Whole code for this project is available on Github. Let me know if something is not clear.