15 Amazing Ways to Enhance AngularJS Mobile App Development Performance
The credit for the development and maintenance of AngularJS, an open source JavaScript framework needs to be given to Google. Thanks to this ingenious tool, it became possible to develop and manage dynamic frontends for mobile applications. The amazing part: It follows a modular approach towards mobile app design. Due to a vast support of AngularJS community it has become one of the most popular tools amongst professional mobile app developers. Before we move any further, it is important to get a fair overview about the meaning of AngularJS and its origin.
The ultimate objective of developing AngularJS was to ease up the complicated process of building and managing JavaScript applications. Usually, it has been observed that AngularJS mobile app development is based on the Model-View-Controller or MVC programming structure. There is a JavaScript library in AngularJS which is inspired by standard JS and HTML. This way AngularJS can easily take care of things like AJAX glue and DOM manipulation. Thereby, ensuring that the AngularJS mobile app developers do not have to code it. This way AngularJS mobile app development can assist in swiftly adding any HTML page with a solitary tag.
In the forthcoming sections of this write-up, we will look at some of the amazing ways to enhance AngularJS mobile app development performance. We promise after reading this content piece you will have adequate information to take full advantage of the AngularJS framework for maximum mobile app development performance.
So, without wasting any more time, let’s get started.
Although there are plenty of inbuilt optimization tools in AngularJS, mobile app developers still complain about the performance of the framework. Reason? Since everyone does not have the luxury of having a massive infrastructure of Google, it is time to resort to some best practices that will help you in enhancing your AngularJS mobile app’s performance.
Irrespective of whether you are looking for performance boost or if you want to retrospect, if you have any room for improvement follow these ways to enhance the AngularJS mobile app development performance.
1. Always be vigilant for your digest cycle
The digest cycle of your AngularJS mobile app is one of the best ways to predict its performance. It is just like a loop that scrutinizes for alterations to variables that are being monitored. Remember, the shorter the digest cycle, the swifter will your mobile application run.
2. Restrict your number of watchers
If you introduce data-bindings during the mobile app development process, chances are quite high to create more $$watchers and $scopes, which assists in prolonging the digest cycle. By having too many $$watchers it is possible to have too many lags. The best case scenario in this case is to restrict their use as much as possible.
3. Employ one-time binding as much as possible
In case, you are using an older version of AngularJS, it is possible to take full advantage of one-time bonding. In order to do so, simply add a double-colon before the value. If you do it correctly, the value will resolve once and disappear from the watchers list.
Note: One-time binding feature was introduced in AngularJS 1.3. It is not available in Angular 4.0.
4. Employ scope.$eva1Async when you need to start the digest cycle
While trying to manually activate the digest cycle when it is already running, it is possible to get an error. In order to stop this from happening, employ scope.$eva1Async instead of $apply whenever you need to start the digest cycle. This way it will queue up operations to be executed at the end of the prevailing cycle without setting off a new one.
5. Employ Chrome DevTools like CPU Profiler and Timeline
Both the CPU Profiler and Timeline tool can be extremely beneficial in finding performance bottlenecks to get the desired optimization results. Read more about Chrome DevTools here.
6. Restrict DOM access
It can be extremely costly to access DOM. Hence, it is extremely vital to keep your DOM trees small. Never modify the DOM if you can help it. Also, don’t set any inline styles to avoid JavaScript reflow.
7. Disable CSS class and comment directives
While you are creating a directive, designate it to be employed as an attribute, CSS class, attribute or comments. In case, you find that there is no need for CSS class and comment directives, disable them for a performance boost.
8. Disable debug data
There are certain tools like Protractor and Batarang that rely on the data about binding and scopes that AngularJS attaches to DOM elements. Hence, after completing the debugging process, disable the additional data in such a way that it does not drag your application down.
9. Employ Lodash
With the assistance of Lodash, it is possible to swiftly rewrite your application’s logic by employing the built-in AngularJS methods. This is the best way to enhance your mobile app’s performance. In case, your mobile app does not employ Lodash, rewrite the methods yourself by employing native JavaScript.
10. Instead of using ng-show employ ng-if or ng-switch
With the help of the directive ng-show it is possible to only toggle the CSS display on or off for a specified element. To get rid of an element from the DOM, employ ng-if or ng-switch.
11. Use ng-repeat minimally as much as possible
Remember, overuse of ng-repeat code can bring down the performance of AngularJS mobile app development. But, do not fret as there are certain alternatives. For example, instead of using ng-repeat to employ it for global navigation, make your own by using the $interpolate provider to render your template against an object before transforming it into a DOM node.
12. Employ $watchCollection
While employing $watch, two parameters are great, but a third one can easily become a crowd. Integrating a third parameter forces AngularJS to run a deep check which can end up taking lots of resources. A quick workaround to this situation is $watchcollection. It works as a third parameter for $watch. But, it still checks the first layer of each object’s properties. This way it does not slow down the things as much.
13. Employ $cacheFactory
In case, you wish to store data that you might require to recalculate later, employ $cacheFactory directive. It works just like any other memorization method.
14. Employ console.time
While facing troubles during debugging, use console. time, an excellent tool that measures execution time and other performance benchmarks.
15. Debounce ng-model
Debouncing inputs by employing the ng-model directive can restrict the digest cycle. For example, by applying ng-model-options=”{debounce:200}” will make sure that the digest cycle does not run more than once every 200ms.
The Final Frontier
These are some of the amazing ways to enhance AngularJS mobile app development performance. If you wish to take full advantage of this ingenious technology avail the services of a reputed AngularJS mobile app development company and feel the difference yourself!
