Angular 14 Latest Updates & Features: Know What’s Unique In Angular 14 

Nithin V

July 13, 2022

Brief Summary

Angular, the most popular JavaScript framework developed by Google, has released its latest version, Angular v14. This update introduces Angular 14 new features and improvements, such as standalone components, optional NGModules, typed reactive forms, and improved template diagnostics. If you’re one among those who get excited about the latest updates and features of Angular, then this blog is for you to explore why exactly you should be moving to version 14! So what exactly is new about Angular version 14 features? Let’s find that out!

The long-awaited upgrade of Angular from Angular 13 to Angular 14 has gained huge popularity among developers. But what exactly is going on? The answer to this can be discovered in the sophisticated Angular 14 features and upgrades, which include typed reactive forms, CLI auto-completion, enhanced templates diagnostics and more. 

Nonetheless, according to programmers and tech experts, Angular Version 14 is thought to be the most cutting-edge, carefully thought-out, and methodical improvement of Angular compared to all other angular updates so far. In addition to guaranteeing top-notch Angular application development and cross-platform compatibility, this typescript-based web application also minimizes the requirement for Angular modules.

But, that’s not it, though! There are more factors at play here! Let’s explore them one by one 

Angular 14 Features & Updates :  The Key Highlights 

The most recent version of Google’s type script-based web application, Angular 14, has a number of built-in capabilities that make it simple to create high-quality apps.

Angular 14 Features & Benefits In A Glance:

• Minimal need for complex code
• Zero requirement for Ng modules 
• More expedient and quick Angular app development
• Enhancements to standalone components

Pre-eminent Angular 14 Updates: Explore What’s New

For many years, one of the most well-liked front-end web application development frameworks, Angular, has helped programmers create single-page applications that are quick, responsive, and scalable.

For Angular developers, Angular 14 update provides a lot of exciting new features and upgrades. The following are some of the most recent upgrades and notable key benefits of Angular 14.

1. Standalone Components

Angular standalone components intend to simplify the design of Angular applications minimizing the need for NgModules. The Standalone components are in the development preview as of version 14. Though these components can be used for development, standalone components still aren’t quite stable. However, since they’re part of the Angular roadmap, there are umpteen chances that they may further evolve in future updates.

Nonetheless, you can declare a standalone component, directive, or pipe by adding standalone: true  in the respective decorator. When declared standalone, the components need not be declared in NgModules. Create your standalone component with ng generate component <name> –standalone

2. Typed Angular Forms

Typed forms provide the type safety of all form control, group, and array values in the entire API surface. This makes the form ‘type-safe’, especially for complex cases with deeply nested forms. 

To interact with this FormGroup, Angular offers numerous APIs such as loginForm.value, loginForm.controls, loginForm.patchValue, etc. However, the previous versions of angular had most of these APIs typed as any.

For example, you could write the following invalid code in the not type-safe form version of angular without any compile errors.

The above-mentioned code does not compile on strictly typed reactive forms because username does not have a firstname property. On ng update command, it will replace all form classes with their untyped equivalents (FormGroup to UntypedFormGroup). 

3. Streamlined Page Title Accessibility

The best practice is to make sure that each page title in your app clearly describes the contents of that page. The new route title property in the Angular Router version 13.2 simplifies this by eliminating the need for additional imports to add a title, and it is strongly typed. Make use of TitleStrategy if you would like to handle custom logic for title.

The above-mentioned example on navigating to the settings page will show the document title as ‘App – Settings’ and the document title as ‘App – Home’ on the home page.

4. Extended Developer Diagnostics

Diagnostics provide precise & actionable recommendations for your templates at compile time, catching errors before the run time. The newly extended diagnostics provide an extendable structure that provides more insight into your templates and how they can be improved.

The following developer diagnostic was updated on v13.2

1. Catching of flipping of brackets and parentheses in two-way binding.
2. Catching nullish coalescing on values that type are not null or undefined.

5. Tree-shakeable Error Messages

This is a notable feature in angular 14 updates as tree-shakeable error messages enable the build optimizer to keep error codes when tree-shaking large strings of error messages from production bundles. The production bundle now preserves the error codes which makes the bundle size smaller.

6. Other Notable Improvements

• The angular version 14 features now support the latest typescript 4.7.
  
• The binding of protected component members directly from your templates will no longer return compile errors. This enables more control of reusable components.

• Angular 14 latest features provide support for passing in an optional injector when creating an embedded view through ViewContainerRef.createEmbeddedView and TemplateRef.createEmbeddedView. It gives an option for dependency injection within the template.

• The ngModel value changes will be reflected in the user interface for the components that have its changeDetection: ChangeDetectionStrategy.OnPush.

• New CDK primitives(CDK menu and dialog) are included in this version that can be used to build custom components. These components are more accessible using the WAI-ARIA menu and menubar design patterns.

• HarnessLoader now has new methods (hasHarness, getHarnessOrNull) that can determine whether a harness is present and if yes, then it will return the instance of that harness.

• The debugging extension for Angular DevTools supports offline use and also supports the firefox browser which wasn’t the case in the previous versions.

• Angular 14 latest features has an experimental esbuild-based build system for ng build that compiles pure ESM(ECMAScript Module) output. You can try it out by updating the browser builder in angular.json.

CLI Enhancements

• Real-time type-ahead autocomplete is now available with new ng completion. When you run a command for the first time in version 14, the CLI will notify you asking whether you would like to enable autocomplete. You can also activate it manually by simply running the command ng completion.

• On the command line, you can manage and print cache data with ng cache. You can print statistics and information, as well as enable, disable, or erase it from the disc.

Takeaway

Angular 14 features include some incredible enhancements which is a significant boon for the entire developer community. However, there is a lot to discover and learn about Angular 14 features, regardless of your level of expertise as a developer. Both developers and users can benefit from the new Angular 14’s standardized API and tooling release’s. 

There are indeed numerous other upgrades and modifications coming from different Angular ecosystem components. In the future, we can see more Web app Development enhancements such as the implementation of the Angular Universal State Transfer API, AOT Compilation for quicker rendering, and other advances. 

Now that you’re aware of the most recent Angular 14 features and enhancements, it’s time to switch to Angular 14!

But, you can always get in touch with our Angular experts if you face any hurdles  while installing or implementing Angular 14 features in your project. Being the best Angular app development company, our skilled angular developers will examine your requirements and assist you in creating a project that is full of extraordinary features. So what are you waiting for? Get Angular 14 new features right away!

Most Frequently Asked Questions About Angular 14

What Is New In Angular 14?

The latest version of Angular 14 comes with

1. Standalone Components
2. Typed Angular Forms
3. Extended Developer Diagnostics
4. Streamlined Page Title Accessibility
5. Bind To Protected Component Members
6. Tree-shakeable Error Messages And More

How To Upgrade Angular 13 To 14

All you have to do is Run ng update @angular/core@14 @angular/cli@14 to upgrade to Angular version 14. 

Nithin V

13 Jul 2022

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