Step-Up the Performance of AngularJS in 5 Simple Ways

The popularity of AngularJS – considered as one of the most widely adopted web app frameworks – has skyrocketed in recent times, following the launch of the long-awaited AngularJS version 4.0. Nevertheless, no matter how advanced the framework is, there are certain issues that new developers face when it comes to optimizing the overall performance of the web app framework.

Moreover, it has also been seen that there are several cases of incorrect deployment of AngularJS methods, which often leads to disastrous results that directly affect the application behavior. To avoid such failures, optimization plays a crucial role, as it boosts the performance levels of the framework dramatically. Illustrated below are 5 simple ways to escalate the performance of AngularJS, in order to make the most out of it.

To start with, it is worth mentioning that the performance of AngularJS can be assessed easily by its “digest cycle, which can be taken in a loop. Throughout this digest cycle, AngularJS verifies if there are any modifications to the variables viewed by the $scopes. In case, $scope.myVar is defined in a controller, and if it is checked for watching, then AngularJS will automatically monitor the modifications on myVar during every loop iteration.

Top 5 ways to improve the performance of AngularJS.

1) The Batarang Tool

The Batarang tool, probably the best Dev-tool from the Angular team so far, reduces debugging efforts significantly. The tool, integrated with top-class features, helps developers to track and monitor the performance of AngularJS. In addition, the Watch tree assesses the scopes that are not destroyed, like it seems when there is an uptick in the memory.

2) Usage of Lodash

Lodash heightens application performance by merely re-writing the basic logic, rather than depending on the built-in AngularJS methods. However, in case, Lodash is not integrated into the application, developers would have to rewrite the entire thing in native JavaScript.

 3) Chrome Dev-Tool Profiler

This is a great Dev-tool to identify bottlenecks in performance. The tool, which offers developers the option to choose the profile type they want to create, comes handy with top-of-the-line performance optimization features like – Take Heap Snapshot, Record Allocation Timeline, and Record Allocation Profile – used for memory profiling. Applications usually render in 2 seconds, or less, after these optimizations, providing users high-level interactivity.

 4) Minimize the Watchers

 As mentioned before, AngularJS typically spins around its digest cycle. The digest cycle basically gets into a loop to identify the model changes every time it is triggered. The time frame of each digest cycle can be substantially decreased by lessening the number of watchers. This lowers the memory footprint of the application as well.

 5) Avoid Using ng-repeat

 The performance of an application can be straight away hiked by not applying the ng-repeat directive. It would be prudent to use JavaScript to develop the HTML, instead of using ng-repeat. Use of ng-repeat, especially for vocalize application, leads to an addition in redundant watchers. Using ng-bind-HTML directive would be a better option to do away with this issue.

The towering popularity of AngularJS can be easily attributed to its powerful framework that aids in developing web applications like no other. Now with the performance optimization tweaks mentioned above, developers can maximize performance with minimal coding, along with reduced risk of generating “spaghetti code”.