This article was updated June 15, 2018. This series and associated repository use Angular 6, CLI 6, RxJS 6, and revised recommendations regarding the storage of sensitive data.

TL;DR: This 8-part tutorial series covers building and deploying a full-stack JavaScript application from the ground up with hosted MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node.js (MEAN stack). The completed code is available in the mean-rsvp-auth0 GitHub repo and a deployed sample app is available at https://rsvp.kmaida.net. Part 1 of the tutorial series covers MEAN setup and the architecture for our Angular app.

Real-World Angular Series

You can view all sections of the tutorial series here:

Part 1: MEAN Setup and Angular Architecture

The first part of this tutorial will cover how to set up the cloud-hosted MongoDB database, Node server, and front end for our real-world Angular application.

Introduction: What We'll Build

This tutorial series will teach you how to build a real-world MEAN stack application, covering everything from ideation and data modeling to production deployment.

We will not be building your run-of-the-mill to-do app. In order to learn the ins and outs of production-level JavaScript web application development, we'll build an app to create and RSVP to events. With our RSVP app, an administrator will be able to create, update, and delete events. Other users will then be able to RSVP to events. Our RSVP app's features will include the following (and more):

Authentication and role authorization (client and server)

CRUD operations with an API

Searching and filtering

Template-driven forms

Reactive forms with custom validation

Simple UI animation

Lazy loading

Production deployment on VPS with nginx and SSL

We'll do all of the above (including SSL and production deployment) at minimal cost to the developer. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to get your own apps launched to production at low-to-no cost!

To explore the final product, check out the deployed, completed app here: https://rsvp.kmaida.net. In your own app, you'll be the administrator and will be able to create and modify events yourself (not just RSVP to existing events).

Let's begin!

Angular App Setup

We'll use the Angular CLI to create and build out our Angular application. Make sure you have the CLI installed globally:

$ npm install -g @angular/cli

The other thing you'll likely want is an Angular Language Service extension for your editor or IDE of choice. The Angular Language Service provides Angular intellisense and autocompletion. To learn more about the Language Service, check out this summary of Day 3 of ng-conf 2017. Check your editor's extension database for "Angular Language Service" and install if found (instructions for VS Code, WebStorm, and Sublime Text are available here).

Create an Angular Project

Once the CLI and Language Service are installed, open a terminal or command prompt at the location you'd like your project folder created and run the following command:

$ ng new mean-rsvp --routing --style scss

This creates and installs a new Angular project with a routing module and SCSS support.

Once the Angular CLI has finished creating the app and installing its dependencies, we're ready to get going on the basic customization necessary for our RSVP app.

Add Title Service

In order to change the page titles for our routes, we'll need to use Angular's Title service. This is because the <title> tag lives outside our Angular application, so we can't simply access it and add a property to change it with data binding.

Open the app.module.ts file and add the Title service to imports and to the providers array like so:

// src/app/app.module.ts import { BrowserModule, Title } from '@angular/platform-browser'; ... @NgModule({ ..., providers: [ Title ], ... })

Add Bootstrap

Now open the src/index.html file and add a link to the Bootstrap CSS on CDN like so:

<!-- src/index.html --> ... <head> ... <title>RSVP</title> ... <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.0.0/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-Gn5384xqQ1aoWXA+058RXPxPg6fy4IWvTNh0E263XmFcJlSAwiGgFAW/dAiS6JXm" crossorigin="anonymous"> </head> ...

Global SCSS

We'll now add some SCSS to manage global styling for our application. This will support basic layout and media queries.

First, open your src/assets folder and create a new scss folder. Now find the src/styles.scss file and move it into src/assets/scss .

Next, open the angular-cli.json file. Find the styles property and change it to the following:

... "styles": [ "assets/scss/styles.scss" ], ...

Now our project will look for this file in the assets folder rather than in the root.

Note: If you have the Angular CLI server running, you'll need to stop and restart it after making changes to the angular-cli.json configuration file.

Next, let's create a few SCSS files.

Base Styles

First we'll create our _base.scss styles. Create this file and add the following SCSS to it:

/* src/assets/scss/_base.scss */ /*-------------------- BASICS --------------------*/ body { min-width: 320px; } /*-- Cursor --*/ a, input[type=button], input[type=submit], button { cursor: pointer; } /*-- Link Buttons --*/ .btn-link { color: #0275d8; &:hover { text-decoration: underline !important; } &:focus { box-shadow: none !important; color: #0275d8; text-decoration: none; } } /*-- Forms --*/ input[type="text"], input[type="number"], input[type="password"], input[type="date"], select option, textarea { font-size: 16px; /* for iOS to prevent autozoom */ } .formErrors { padding-top: 6px; } .ng-invalid.ng-dirty, .ng-invalid.ng-dirty:focus { border-color: #D9534E !important; } input::-webkit-input-placeholder { /* Chrome/Opera/Safari */ color: rgba(0,0,0,.25) !important; opacity: 1 !important; } input::-moz-placeholder { /* Firefox 19+ */ color: rgba(0,0,0,.25) !important; opacity: 1 !important; } input:-moz-placeholder { /* Firefox 18- */ color: rgba(0,0,0,.25) !important; opacity: 1 !important; } input:-ms-input-placeholder { /* IE 10+ */ color: rgba(0,0,0,.25) !important; opacity: 1 !important; } /*-- Helpers --*/ .list-group-item > strong { padding-right: 5px; }

Bootstrap provides a CSS reset and plenty of styling. Our local _base.scss provides some basic helpers and improvements.

Variables and Partials

Now we'll add a few files for variables and partials. Create a new folder in your src/assets/scss directory called partials .

In the partials folder, add a new file called _layout.vars.scss and add the following:

/* src/assets/scss/partials/_layout.vars.scss */ /*-------------------- LAYOUT VARIABLES --------------------*/ $padding-screen-small: 3%; $padding-screen-large: 1.5% 3%;

In the same partials folder, create a file called _responsive.partial.scss :

/* src/assets/scss/partials/_responsive.partial.scss */ /*-------------------- RESPONSIVE --------------------*/ /*-- Variables --*/ $large: 'screen and (min-width: 768px)'; /*-- Mixins --*/ @mixin mq($mqString) { @media #{$mqString} { @content; } }

This file contains a $large variable with a media query for large screen sizes and an mq() mixin for easily targeting media queries in our SCSS. If necessary, we can add more variables to this file as our app grows.

Import Global SCSS

Finally, we need to import all the files we just created. Open the styles.scss file and add:

/* src/assets/scss/styles.scss */ // partials @import 'partials/layout.vars'; @import 'partials/responsive.partial'; // global styles @import 'base';

Global Polyfill

The last setup step we'll take is to add a global window polyfill to our src/polyfills.ts file. Open this file and add the following:

// src/polyfills.ts (window as any).global = window; ...

Now our Angular app has everything we need to get started developing features. However, before we move forward with any more client side development, let's set up MongoDB and our Node.js API!

Hosted MongoDB Setup

MongoDB is an open-source document database. For speed and ease, we'll use mLab's free, cloud-hosted MongoDB deployment for our application's database. We'll also set up a handy tool called MongoBooster for simple MongoDB access and management.

Create mLab Account and Database

Let's sign up and create our new database.

Go to mLab and sign up for an account. Confirm your email address. Doing so will take you to your account dashboard. Under MongoDB Deployments, click the "Create new" button. Select your desired Cloud Provider and Region. Change the Plan to Single-node and select the free "Sandbox" option. Scroll down and give your database a name, like mean . Click the "Create new MongoDB deployment" button.

The new database can now be selected from our deployments. It should look something like this:

We now need to add a user in order to connect to our database. Click on the database to edit it.

Select the Users tab and click the "Add database user" button. Enter a database username and password in the modal. These credentials will be needed to read and write to the database with Node. Make a note of the database's MongoDB URI. This should be in the format: mongodb://<dbuser>:<dbpassword>@<ds111111>.mlab.com:<port>/<dbname> .

Now we're ready to use our MongoDB database.

Note: If you prefer, you can host MongoDB locally. Follow these instructions to install MongoDB on your operating system.

Set Up MongoBooster

For easy database management, we can use an app called MongoBooster. The free version will serve our purposes just fine. Download MongoBooster for your OS and open it.

In the upper left of the Connections prompt, click "Create" to set up a new connection. A Connection Editor dialog will appear with the Basic tab open. Enter the server address. This will be the MongoDB URI that we made note of earlier, something like: <ds111111>.mlab.com . Enter the port number in the field after the : . Enter a name for the connection, such as mLab - mean .

Next, switch to the Authentication tab.

For Mode, select "Basic(Username/Password)" from the dropdown. Enter your mLab database name, likely mean . Enter the user name for the user you created in mLab. Enter the password you created for the user in mLab.

We should now be able to click the "Test Connection" button to confirm our configuration. If everything was entered correctly, we should receive a Test Connection dialog that confirms we were able to connect and authorize with a status of OK .

Note: If you encounter a failure, double-check the information you entered.

Close the test dialog and click the "Save" button. We can now select and connect to our mLab mean database with MongoBooster.

Auth0 Account and Setup

Our Angular application and Node API will use the IDaaS (Identity-as-a-Service) platform Auth0 for authentication and route authorization.

Sign Up for a Free Auth0 Account

You'll need an Auth0 account to manage authentication. You can sign up for a free account here. Next, set up an Auth0 application and API so Auth0 can interface with an Angular app and Node API.

Auth0 provides the simplest and easiest to use user interface tools to help administrators manage user identities including password resets, creating and provisioning, blocking and deleting users. A generous free tier is offered so you can get started with modern authentication.

Set Up an Application

Go to your Auth0 Dashboard and click the "create a new application" button. Give your new app a name (for example: RSVP MEAN App ) and select "Single Page Web Applications". In the Settings for your new Auth0 application, add http://localhost:8083/callback and http://localhost:4200/callback to the Allowed Callback URLs. In Allowed Web Origins, add http://localhost:8083 and http://localhost:4200 . In Allowed Logout URLs, add http://localhost:4200 . Make sure the Use Auth0 instead of the IdP to do Single Sign On toggle is enabled. Scroll down to the bottom of the Settings section and click "Show Advanced Settings". Choose the OAuth tab and make sure the JsonWebToken Signature Algorithm is set to "RS256". If you'd like, you can set up some social connections. You can then enable them for your app in the Connections settings tab for your RSVP Mean App application. The example shown in the screenshot above utilizes username/password database, Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

We added two ports to the callback URLs and allowed web origins because we'll be running and testing the app from both during development. Port 4200 is the port the Angular CLI serves the Angular app from. Port 8083 is the port our Node API and server uses: this will be necessary in order to test the production build. When we launch to a production URL, we can either create a new production Auth0 Application or add our production URL to the app as well.

Note: If you set up social connections, enter App/Client IDs as per the instructions for each connection instead of leaving those fields blank and using Auth0 dev keys. This will be important for token renewal and deployment later.

Set Up an API

Go to APIs in your dashboard and click the "Create API" button. Enter a name for the API (for example: RSVP MEAN API ). Set the Identifier to your API endpoint URL. This identifier is the audience parameter on authorization calls. In our app, this is http://localhost:8083/api/ . The Signing Algorithm should be "RS256".

Node.js Server Setup

Our next order of business is the Node server and API.

Install Dependencies

In the root folder of our new Angular app, install the following dependencies with npm, saving them to the package.json like so:

$ npm install express body-parser express-jwt jwks-rsa method-override mongoose cors --save

File Structure

Create a new folder at the root of the project called server . Inside this folder, add two new files: server/api.js and server/config.js . At the root of the project, create a server.js file. The file structure should now look like this:

... server/ |- api.js |- config.js src/ ... server.js ...

Configuration

Open the server/config.js file and add the following to it:

// server/config.js module.exports = { AUTH0_DOMAIN: '[YOUR_AUTH0_DOMAIN]', // e.g., kmaida.auth0.com AUTH0_API_AUDIENCE: '[YOUR_AUTH0_API_NAME]', // e.g., 'http://localhost:8083/api/' MONGO_URI: 'mongodb://[USER]:[PASSWORD]@[DS######].mlab.com:[PORT]/[DB_NAME]' };

Replace the Auth0 domain, API audience, and MongoDB URI with the appropriate data from your Auth0 account and mLab database.

Server

Now let's develop our server.js . Open the empty file we created and add the following to it:

// server.js /* |-------------------------------------- | Dependencies |-------------------------------------- */ // Modules const express = require('express'); const path = require('path'); const bodyParser = require('body-parser'); const mongoose = require('mongoose'); const methodOverride = require('method-override'); const cors = require('cors'); // Config const config = require('./server/config'); /* |-------------------------------------- | MongoDB |-------------------------------------- */ mongoose.connect(config.MONGO_URI); const monDb = mongoose.connection; monDb.on('error', function() { console.error('MongoDB Connection Error. Please make sure that', config.MONGO_URI, 'is running.'); }); monDb.once('open', function callback() { console.info('Connected to MongoDB:', config.MONGO_URI); }); /* |-------------------------------------- | App |-------------------------------------- */ const app = express(); app.use(bodyParser.json()); app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false })); app.use(methodOverride('X-HTTP-Method-Override')); app.use(cors()); // Set port const port = process.env.PORT || '8083'; app.set('port', port); // Set static path to Angular app in dist // Don't run in dev if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'dev') { app.use('/', express.static(path.join(__dirname, './dist'))); } /* |-------------------------------------- | Routes |-------------------------------------- */ require('./server/api')(app, config); // Pass routing to Angular app // Don't run in dev if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'dev') { app.get('*', function(req, res) { res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, '/dist/index.html')); }); } /* |-------------------------------------- | Server |-------------------------------------- */ app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Server running on localhost:${port}`));

Notice that there are a few sections that are environment-dependent. For development, we want to be able to take advantage of the Angular CLI's ability to serve and watch files without requiring an entire project build each time we want to check our work. In order to facilitate this, we'll start by separating our Node.js server from our Angular front end in development.

This way, we can run the Node API on localhost:8083 while the Angular app runs on localhost:4200. For production, we want the Node server to run the API and use a static path to serve the front end. Our MEAN stack should pass routing to the compiled Angular app for deployment.

API Routes

Open the api.js file and add the following:

// server/api.js /* |-------------------------------------- | Dependencies |-------------------------------------- */ const jwt = require('express-jwt'); const jwks = require('jwks-rsa'); /* |-------------------------------------- | Authentication Middleware |-------------------------------------- */ module.exports = function(app, config) { // Authentication middleware const jwtCheck = jwt({ secret: jwks.expressJwtSecret({ cache: true, rateLimit: true, jwksRequestsPerMinute: 5, jwksUri: `https://${config.AUTH0_DOMAIN}/.well-known/jwks.json` }), audience: config.AUTH0_API_AUDIENCE, issuer: `https://${config.AUTH0_DOMAIN}/`, algorithm: 'RS256' }); /* |-------------------------------------- | API Routes |-------------------------------------- */ // GET API root app.get('/api/', (req, res) => { res.send('API works'); }); };

Using express-jwt and jwks-rsa with our Auth0 API, we can implement protection for selected API routes when necessary. We'll do this by adding a jwtCheck middleware function to routes we want to secure. We'll discuss this more later.

Serve and Watch the App and API

Let's install nodemon globally to watch the Node server for changes without needing to restart after making updates:

$ npm install nodemon -g

Note: If you encounter EACCESS errors when using npm, you may need to execute some commands either with the command prompt running as administrator (Windows) or with sudo (Mac/Linux).

We should now be able to access both the Angular application and the API in the browser on localhost . We can do so by running each of the following commands from the root of our project in separate terminal windows (VS Code is great at this).

Note: We'll be using separate terminal windows a lot so we can keep watching the app and API while adding components with the Angular CLI. Alternatively, you could install concurrently to simultaneously run commands in the same window using an npm script. For this tutorial, we won't do this since we will need to restart ng serve periodically while generating new files, and this is more easily done if we have the CLI command running separately from our Node server.

We can use this command to serve the Angular app:

$ ng serve

In another terminal, set the environment variable and then serve the Node API:

# Windows: $ SET NODE_ENV=dev $ nodemon server # OR Mac: $ NODE_ENV=dev nodemon server

If we've done everything correctly, the Angular app will compile and show a success message in its terminal. We should also see a message in the Node server terminal confirming that the server is running and that we've successfully connected to MongoDB.

We can then navigate to http://localhost:4200 to see our Angular app running in the browser:

We can also navigate to http://localhost:8083/api to see our API running:

Note: Eventually we'll be serving everything from the Node server, but since this requires the Angular app to be built and no longer watched, we won't do this until later. However, if you'd like to see what this looks like now, you can run ng build followed by node server . This will build and serve the app and API on http://localhost:8083.

Our Node API and Angular app are now up and running in a development environment!

Angular: Add a Home Component

Let's generate a component for our app's homepage. We'll run the following Angular CLI command from the root of our project:

$ ng g component pages/home

Now let's add our Home component to routing. Open the app-routing.module.ts file and import the HomeComponent :

// src/app/app-routing.module.ts ... import { HomeComponent } from './pages/home/home.component'; const routes: Routes = [ { path: '', component: HomeComponent } ]; ...

We'll set the '' path to use our new Home component. Now when we view our app in the browser, we should see our Home component rendered:

Use Title Service

Let's add a <title> to our home component. We'll do this by using the Title service. We already provided Title in Angular App Setup, so we can use it immediately.

Open the home.component.ts file:

// src/app/pages/home/home.component.ts ... import { Title } from '@angular/platform-browser'; ... export class HomeComponent implements OnInit { pageTitle = 'Events'; constructor(private title: Title) { } ngOnInit() { this.title.setTitle(this.pageTitle); } }

We'll import the Title service and then add a property called pageTitle with a value of Events . Then we'll pass the Title service to the constructor and in the ngOnInit() lifecycle method, we'll use the title.setTitle() method to change the document title to the value of our local pageTitle . By storing this title in a property, we can also use it in our component's template to set a heading. Let's do that now.

Open home.component.html and add:

<!-- src/app/pages/home/home.component.html --> <h1 class="text-center">{{ pageTitle }}</h1>

The document title and heading should now show up in the browser. We have routing and a home component in place, so now we can get started on the global layout of our Angular app.

Angular: Layout and Global Components

Next we need to set up our Angular app's layout and global elements, such as header, navigation, and footer. We want our app to work in any size browser, so we'll implement off-canvas navigation. To do so, we need to add some markup and functionality to our root app component as well as create a header and footer.

Let's generate the components for our app's global header and footer:

$ ng g component header $ ng g component footer

Note: For the sake of brevity in this tutorial, we're going to ignore .spec.ts files, as we won't cover testing. However, feel free to write your own tests during development. If you wish to generate components without creating test files, you can add the --no-spec flag to your g commands.

Header Component

Let's start with the Header component we just generated. Open the header.component.ts file and add:

// src/app/header/header.component.ts import { Component, OnInit, Output, EventEmitter } from '@angular/core'; import { Router, NavigationStart } from '@angular/router'; import { filter } from 'rxjs/operators'; @Component({ selector: 'app-header', templateUrl: './header.component.html', styleUrls: ['./header.component.scss'] }) export class HeaderComponent implements OnInit { @Output() navToggled = new EventEmitter(); navOpen = false; constructor(private router: Router) { } ngOnInit() { // If nav is open after routing, close it this.router.events .pipe( filter(event => event instanceof NavigationStart && this.navOpen) ) .subscribe(event => this.toggleNav()); } toggleNav() { this.navOpen = !this.navOpen; this.navToggled.emit(this.navOpen); } }

This component handles interaction with the hamburger menu toggle and route changes from the navigation links. There are many ways that Angular can tackle component interaction. In this case, we want a parent to listen for a child event (App listens for an event from Header). We'll use the @Output decorator to create an EventEmitter to notify the parent component when the user has clicked on the hamburger menu toggle to open or close the nav panel.

The navOpen property defaults to false (the off-canvas navigation panel is closed on load). We need access to the Router to determine when navigation has taken place, so we'll add it to the constructor.

When the component initializes, we'll use the router events observable to check if navOpen is true on NavigationStart . If this is the case, we want to close the panel so it's not still open when we arrive at a new route.

The toggleNav() method is executed when the user clicks the hamburger toggle button in the template. It emits a navToggled event that the parent component can then listen for and handle. When the user clicks the toggle, we'll change the value of navOpen and then emit the event with this new value.

This click event is implemented in the header.component.html template:

<!-- src/app/header/header.component.html --> <header id="header" class="header"> <div class="header-page bg-primary"> <a class="toggle-offcanvas bg-primary" (click)="toggleNav()"><span></span></a> <h1 class="header-page-siteTitle"> <a routerLink="/">RSVP</a> </h1> </div> <nav id="nav" class="nav" role="navigation"> <ul class="nav-list"> <li> <a routerLink="/" routerLinkActive="active" [routerLinkActiveOptions]="{ exact: true }">Events</a> </li> </ul> </nav> </header>

Note: Please take a look at Angular's binding syntax. Parentheses () indicate event binding and square brackets [] indicate expression binding.

The <nav> element contains an unordered list of our routes. For now, we only have the "Events" link (which routes to our Home component). We'll use the routerLink and routerLinkActive directives on an anchor tag to handle links to our routes. We'll specify the route we want to navigate to and the class to be applied when that route is active.

We need to add [routerLinkActiveOptions] to ensure an exact match to the / path in the case of the root route. Otherwise, this link will receive the active class whenever any route containing / is active.

Our header.component.scss contains the styles for our hamburger menu toggle, site title, and navigation list. Open this file and add the following:

/* src/app/header/header.component.scss */ /*-------------------- HEADER --------------------*/ @import '../../assets/scss/partials/layout.vars'; /*-- Navigation --*/ .nav { background: #eee; backface-visibility: hidden; -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden; box-shadow: inset -8px 0 8px -6px rgba(0,0,0,0.2); display: none; /* deal with FOUC */ height: 100%; overflow-y: auto; padding: $padding-screen-small; position: absolute; top: 0; transform: translate3d(-100%,0,0); width: 270px; :host-context(.nav-closed) &, :host-context(.nav-open) & { display: block; /* deal with FOUC */ } .active { font-weight: bold; } &-list { list-style: none; margin-bottom: 0; padding-left: 0; a { display: block; padding: 6px; &:hover, &:active, &:focus { text-decoration: none; } } } } /*-- Hamburger toggle --*/ .toggle-offcanvas { border-right: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.5); display: inline-block; height: 50px; padding: 23.5px 13px; position: relative; text-align: center; width: 50px; z-index: 100; span, span:before, span:after { background: #fff; border-radius: 1px; content: ''; display: block; height: 3px; position: absolute; transition: all 250ms ease-in-out; width: 24px; } span { &:before { top: -9px; } &:after { bottom: -9px; } } :host-context(.nav-open) & { span { background: transparent; &:before, &:after { top: 0; } &:before { transform: rotate(45deg); } &:after { transform: rotate(-45deg); } } } } /*-- Header and title --*/ .header-page { color: #fff; height: 50px; margin-bottom: 10px; position: relative; &-siteTitle { font-size: 30px; line-height: 50px; margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 60px; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%; } a { color: #fff; text-decoration: none; } }

Note: If we need access to partials (such as _layout.vars.scss ) in our encapsulated component styles, we need to import those files.

This file provides styles for the nav and header as well as CSS to animate the hamburger icon into an X and back. When accessing classes outside the current component, we can use the special selector :host-context(.ancestor-class) to reach out of the component's encapsulation and up the tree.

Footer Component

Our Footer component is very simple: just a static paragraph with a link to the source repo. Open the footer.component.html template and add:

<!-- src/app/footer/footer.component.html --> <p class="text-center"> MIT 2018 </p>

Note: You could put something fancier here if you wish.

Add the following styles to footer.component.scss :

/* src/app/footer/footer.component.scss */ /*-------------------- FOOTER --------------------*/ :host { display: block; padding-bottom: 10px; } p { font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0; }

We'll shift the bottom margin/padding to the host element so the paragraph margin doesn't interfere with our calculation of window height in the next step.

App Component

Now we'll add the Header and Footer components to our App component, along with markup and logic to enable off-canvas navigation.

Open the app.component.ts file:

// src/app/app.component.ts import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core'; import { fromEvent } from 'rxjs'; import { debounceTime } from 'rxjs/operators'; @Component({ selector: 'app-root', templateUrl: './app.component.html', styleUrls: ['./app.component.scss'] }) export class AppComponent implements OnInit { navOpen: boolean; minHeight: string; private _initWinHeight = 0; constructor() {} ngOnInit() { fromEvent(window, 'resize') .pipe( debounceTime(200) ) .subscribe((event) => this._resizeFn(event)); this._initWinHeight = window.innerHeight; this._resizeFn(null); } navToggledHandler(e: boolean) { this.navOpen = e; } private _resizeFn(e) { const winHeight: number = e ? e.target.innerHeight : this._initWinHeight; this.minHeight = `${winHeight}px`; } }

We'll create a navOpen property to sync the state of the navigation panel with our Header component. This is where we'll store the event data that the Header component sends when the navToggled event is emitted. We'll use a navToggledHandler() method with an $event argument to react to this event.

We'll use an observable fromEvent to subscribe to the window resize event. We can run a _resizeFn() handler that ensures that the height of the layout canvas matches the height of the browser viewport.

Note: We could also achieve close to the same thing by setting height: 100vh on the layout canvas element in our CSS, but we're going with a JS option due to inconsistencies with vh in mobile browsers.

Open the app.component.html file and add:

<!-- src/app/app.component.html --> <div class="layout-overflow"> <div class="layout-canvas" [ngClass]="{ 'nav-open': navOpen, 'nav-closed': !navOpen }" [style.min-height]="minHeight"> <!-- HEADER --> <app-header (navToggled)="navToggledHandler($event)"></app-header> <!-- CONTENT --> <div id="layout-view" class="layout-view"> <router-outlet></router-outlet> </div> <!-- FOOTER --> <app-footer></app-footer> </div> <!-- /.layout-canvas --> </div> <!-- /.layout-overflow -->

We have several layouting containers to manage the off-canvas panel that slides in and out from the left side of the screen, pushing the rest of the content over. We also use the navOpen property to apply or remove .nav-open and .nav-closed classes on the <div class="layout-canvas"> element with the ngClass directive.

Note: These are the classes that we used :host-context() to access in the child Header component.

We'll also apply the calculated minHeight using a [style.min-height] property.

Note: This is a DOM property, not an HTML attribute. It's important to note the difference. Make sure to read through Binding Syntax: HTML attribute vs. DOM property to learn about this new mental model.

The <app-header> component listens for the navToggled event and then handles it with our navToggledHandler() method. We then have a container element with the router-outlet directive inside it. This is where all of our routed components will render. Finally, we have our <app-footer> component.

The styles for our app.component.scss should look like this:

/* src/app/app.component.scss */ /*-------------------- APP COMPONENT --------------------*/ @import '../assets/scss/partials/layout.vars'; @import '../assets/scss/partials/responsive.partial'; .layout-overflow { overflow: hidden; /* necessary to handle offcanvas scrollbar behavior */ } .layout-canvas { background: #fff; backface-visibility: hidden; -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden; /* Safari: http://caniuse.com/#search=css3%203d */ position: relative; left: 0; transition: transform 250ms ease; transform: translate3d(0,0,0); width: 100%; &.nav-open { transform: translate3d(270px,0,0); } } .layout-view { padding: $padding-screen-small; @include mq($large) { margin: 0 auto; max-width: 960px; padding: $padding-screen-large; } }

When the navigation is open, the layout canvas should slide over. We also have a few styles for the container for routed components (layout view).

That's it for the layout and global navigation! The app should look like this in the browser:

Now that we have our structure and global components in place, we're ready to start developing features next time.

Aside: Linting

The Angular CLI uses Codelyzer to lint Angular projects and raise warnings when the developer has used practices that do not adhere to the Angular Style Guide. Now might be a good time to run ng lint to lint our project and make sure there are no errors.

Aside: Securing Applications with Auth0

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Summary

We've covered setup and dependencies for the software and tools needed for our MEAN stack application. We've also established the basic layout and architecture of our Angular front end. In the next part of the Real-World Angular Series, we'll tackle authentication and authorization, feature planning, and data modeling.