The MVC Architecture in Angular

AngularJS is a leading framework for building JS heavy single page based web applications. Single page apps or SPA’s load the entire content of a site within a single page. This single page is usually an index.html file. This means that once the main page is loaded, clicking on links will not reload the entire page but simply update sections within the page itself.

There are great examples of this technology being used in modern websites. The popularity of SPA-based web apps has taken off based on the fact that they allow us to deliver rich, dynamic and fast loading content that mimics that of desktop applications.

Architectural Pattern

In this article, we are going to have a look at the MVC architecture that is actually implemented in AngularJS. Whenever you create an application, some architectural pattern must be implemented on that. It will give your application a better structure. So we will start seeing the architectural pattern, and after that, we will cover the architectural pattern we are using in AngularJS, the MVC (Model View Controller). Let us first have a look at what this architectural pattern is all about.

Reusable

It is a reusable solution that simply means whenever you start writing some code or some view or anything in your project, and you prefer to be able to reuse that as much as you can. Furthermore, it means that once a reusable solution is written, you can use it multiple times. Any architectural pattern will provide you with this facility.

Broader Scope as Compared to Software Architecture

It is somewhat similar to the software design pattern but a bit more than that. The software design patterns just focus on the software implementation things. However, in architectural patterns, yes, we do focus on the software design patterns. Apart from that, we also look at the hardware performance, availability, and the tolerance of business risks. All of these things will also be there whenever you are working on some architectural pattern.

Architectural Patterns

You can find some of the very common architectural patterns nowadays like Event-Driven architecture, Model View View Model (MVVM), Model View Presenter (MVP), Model View Controller (MVC), etc. In this article, we are just going to look at the MVC, although the Event-Driven architecture is again a very famous architectural pattern and many more like that.

The MVC Architecture in Angular

MVC architecture is basically implemented whenever you want to form a UI-based application. That simply means that in MVC, we will not focus on the database activities that we will do in some other ways. Here we will focus on designing your UI and how to get the data into your user interface. You will divide the complete application into three major interconnected parts: Model, View, and Controller.

Let us understand the purpose of each component of MVC serve:

Model

The model basically helps us carry and manage the data or any logic or application rules. The model consists of databases and application data. It is responsible for maintaining the data. So, for example, you have two views, and you want to transfer some data to the other or maybe to some controller or some other source to your view; in that situation, we can go for the model that can bring the data to our UI.

View

The view is simply the user interface, meaning whatever a user can see is a view that can be an HTML page, a graph, or any representational data. The view is the user interface part of an application. It is responsible for displaying data to the user.

Controller

The controller is responsible for controlling the interaction between the model and view. Accepts input and converts it to commands for the model or view. The user starts the execution. This user will send a request to the controller, which will get accepted by the controller. Then as per the request, it gathers the data and manipulates the model. Now the view receives the same data that the model is writing. The view is just an HTML template representing the view in Angular JS.

Examples

For example, when a user enters a URL in the browser according to that specific URL, control goes to the server, and it calls the controller. After that, the controller uses the appropriate model and view to make an appropriate response for the user request. Then, it creates the response, and that response is sent back to the user.

Another example is when a user clicks on any of the buttons in a view, the controller recognizes the button click event and performs a function. Now the function communicates with the model, and it retrieves all users’ data. Then the controller passes accessibility. Then the controller passes accessibility to the view, which then displays as the end-user.

Benefits of MVC

Reusability

For example, the view is independent of any other model or controller, so you buy the same view with multiple models or controllers situationally.

Decoupled Code

It simply means that when you start writing the program, it should have less dependency. It means that if you start creating the smaller modules, they will be isolated within themselves or maybe they would be less dependent. It would be easy to change one of the modules without affecting the other modules.

Parallel Development

The view is independent of any logical implementation like model and controller. So that at the same time the developer and designer can start working where a designer would be designing the layout of the page, and the developer would be focusing on the other logical stuff. Both do not need to get dependent on each other and they can perform a parallel development. It will also increase your development speed.

Multiple View Support

The view is independent of any model. For example, suppose you created a model and want to represent it in different ways, sometimes in a tabular format, sometimes in a list format, or maybe in thumbnail format, or maybe something like that. Then, you can bind the same model with different views to create the different appearances of your data on the different web pages.

Conclusion

To summarise the MVC architecture in Angular. We have learned that the model interacts with the database and is also responsible for executing business logic. So our model basically deals with data, then our view is what the user sees on the screen it generates the UI or user interface for the user, and our controller takes user input, also called as request parameters it also interacts with the model and view, so our controller basically acts as a middleman between our model and view.