Overview:
MovieCraze-Angular is an Angular app that uses HTML, SCSS, Typescript, Angular Router, and Angular Material. The backend is my Movie-API that was utilized in the React version of MovieCraze.
Purpose & Context:
The purpose of MovieCraze-Angular is to expand my knowledge of frameworks to include Angular, as well as learn Typescript. In addition, a Kaban board was used to keep the project on track and easier to manage.
Objective:
The objective of MovieCraze-Angular is to create the client side for a movie API using Angular. The backend is a Rest API I created called Movie-API. The project includes documentation as well.
The Process:
Step 1: Basic Angular and Typescript
I had initially expected for Angular to be a little similar to React than it was. All of the file structures, state management, and in general, how I used Javascript to do things, all felt totally different.
Then there was Typescript. Although very similar to Javascript, learning this statically typed language wasn't without it's challenges. Fixing the first few data type errors was slightly frustrating, but in time, I got hte hang of it and started to enjoy the extra control I had over my data.
Step 2: Advanced Angular and Material
After learning the basics of Angular, I began to embrace the differences between it and React. I enjoyed working with a template and got a handle on passing data from template to component and visa versa. The syntax ultimately felt a lot cleaner and easier to manage.
One of the toughest challenges I ran into was with objects behaving as expected. A movie object passed into the template that wouldn't display it's ID, user objects not outputting their names. At first, frustration and mystery, but overtime I learned that most of my issues were due to insufficient data types. This lead me to using classes so my types could be more accurate.
Lastly there was Angular Material, which I think I may have fallen in love with. It was like making a button and throwing several Bootstrap classes on it, all by importing a module, making a button, and telling it what kind of button to be. It felt a lot cleaner than using bootstrap like I have in the past.
Conclusion:
MovieCraze-Angular was a huge confidence builder to make. I couldn't help but think back to the first Javascript errors I ran into when I was creating my first few apps. Issues that would have stumped me for days back then, were now something I could figure out in 15 or so minutes with google.
I finally started to feel like I was becoming a developer that was capable of planning, learning new technology and troubleshooting effectively. More than that, I was having a ton of fun doing it all. This project more than any other has gotten me really excited to get a job and working with teams on big real world applications.