Single Page Web Applications with AngularJS (Coursera)

In this course, we will explore the core design of AngularJS 1.x (latest version of AngularJS 1), its components and code organization techniques. We will enhance the functionality of our web app by utilizing dependency injection to reuse existing services as well as write our own. We will create reusable HTML components that take advantage of AngularJS data binding as well as extend HTML syntax with a very powerful feature of AngularJS called directives. We’ll set up routing so our SPA can have multiple views. We will also learn how to unit test our functionality. At the end of this course, you will build a fully functional, well organized and tested web application using AngularJS and deploy it to the cloud.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Introduction to AngularJS
In this module, we are going to start by going over how grading works for this course, will introduce some recommended books, as well as give you the information on how to find all of the source code that you will see throughout the course.
We will then dive into the development environment setup for both Mac and Windows. The core of this module will be the introduction not only to the basics of AngularJS, but more importantly, the concepts that back AngularJS as a good solution for developing front-end web applications. To become a good software developer and not just with AngularJS, you will need to understand these concepts. But for becoming a good AngularJS developer, these concepts are essential, because they will allow you to understand the issues the framework is addressing and therefore get a good grasp on the solutions AngularJS is offering.

WEEK 2
Filters, Digest Cycle, Controller Inheritance, and Custom Services
We will start this module by learning how to use Angular filters to manipulate our data into the format we want and learn how to create our own custom filters. We will then dive deep into the digest cycle, which is the process AngularJS uses to magically update our web page with the bound data from our ViewModel or the controller. Understanding this process is crucial in getting comfortable with AngularJS. We'll also see some cases where we'll need to assist that process somewhat and understand why that is. After that, we'll learn one of the most fundamental concepts in the Javascript programming language, which is Prototypal Inheritance. Clear understanding of that topic is a must before we talk about inheritance between AngularJS controllers in our application. We'll finish off the module by learning how to create our own custom Angular services as well as how to configure them. With custom Angular services we'll be able to share data across different controllers or other components in our application. We will also learn a few useful Angular directives that allow us to place looping and conditional logic direction into our HTML. You'll see that by the end of this module, you'll have the skills to create a fairly sophisticated web application that starts to use some of the more advanced software architecture techniques.

WEEK 3
Under Construction - available in week 4 (or earlier)
In this module, we start by introducing the idea of Component-based architecture. We will then delve into the AngularJS component API. The component API is something that was just recently added into Angular 1 and it's not only supposed to improve your application through the use of Component-based architecture, but also prepare you for an upgrade to Angular version 2, which uses components almost exclusively. We will then learn about the AngularJS event system and how to split up our application into smaller modules that can then be glued together to produce our final application. We'll finish off the module by diving fairly deep into Routing between views in your application and, specifically, into the use of the ui-router module, which is one of the most popular open source routing solutions within the AngularJS ecosystem. In fact, it's so popular that even the main Google documentation for routing in Angular links to ui-router. Routing is a very important topic. Without it, your Single Page Application is stuck displaying just 1 view, without an elegant way to display other views.

WEEK 5
Under Construction - available in week 5 (or earlier)
Welcome to module 5! This is the last module in the course. We'll start this module by learning just how easy it is to validate forms with Angular. We will then delve into unit testing our AngularJS code. We will go over how to set up tests for every type of major Angular artifact: controller, service, directive, and component, as well as how to test services that access the network through the HTTP service. However, the last part of the module is the most fun. We will take the site that was developed for our real client in my previous course and re-write the entire thing using AngularJS. However, the coding fun doesn't have to stop there. After you finish the required part of the course, you can move on to the optional bonus part where we take our newly developed AngularJS application and enhance with it even more features that will allow the restaurant owners to administer their own data. We'll go over setting up authentication, editing restaurant menu items, uploading menu item pictures and so on.