5 Common Angular Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

January 11th, 2025

Angular is a fantastic framework for building robust web applications, but like any powerful tool, it comes with its own set of challenges. If you’re a beginner, it’s easy to fall into some common pitfalls that can slow down development or cause unnecessary headaches. In this post, we’ll explore five of these pitfalls and provide actionable tips to help you avoid them.

1. Skipping Angular CLI

One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is not fully leveraging the Angular Command Line Interface (CLI). Many developers, especially those transitioning from other frameworks, may try to manually set up their project or avoid using CLI commands.

Check out this link to the Official Angular CLI documentation.

Why It’s a Problem

Setting up a project manually increases the risk of misconfigurations and inconsistencies. Plus, it’s time-consuming.

How to Avoid It

Always use the Angular CLI for creating and managing your projects. It handles boilerplate code, enforces best practices, and offers powerful commands for generating components, services, and more. For example:

ng new my-app
ng generate component my-component

With the CLI, you can focus on building features instead of troubleshooting setup issues.

2. Neglecting to Use Modules Effectively

Angular encourages a modular architecture, but beginners often place all components and services in the root module. This leads to bloated code and reduced scalability.

Here is a link to the Official Angular Modules documentation.

Why It’s a Problem

Overloading the root module makes your application harder to maintain and impacts performance as the application grows.

How to Avoid It

Divide your app into feature modules. Each module should handle a specific section or functionality of your app. For example:

@NgModule({
  declarations: [FeatureComponent],
  imports: [CommonModule],
  exports: [FeatureComponent],
})
export class FeatureModule {}

Lazy loading these modules can further enhance performance.

3. Not Optimizing for Performance

Beginners often overlook performance optimization techniques, resulting in slower applications. A common example is forgetting to use Angular’s OnPush change detection strategy or failing to implement lazy loading.

Why It’s a Problem

Poor performance can frustrate users and lead to higher resource consumption.

How to Avoid It

  • Use ChangeDetectionStrategy.OnPush for components that don’t frequently update.
  • Implement lazy loading to load modules only when needed:
const routes: Routes = [{ path: "feature", loadChildren: () => import("./feature/feature.module").then((m) => m.FeatureModule) }];

These small adjustments can make a significant difference in performance.

Here is a wonderful blog post discussion covering OnPush change detection!

4. Ignoring Dependency Injection

Angular’s dependency injection (DI) system is one of its core features, yet many beginners either misuse it or avoid it altogether.

Why It’s a Problem

Without DI, components can become tightly coupled to specific implementations, making them harder to test and maintain.

How to Avoid It

Use services with the @Injectable decorator to share logic between components. For example:

@Injectable({
  providedIn: "root",
})
export class DataService {
  getData() {
    return "Hello, Angular!";
  }
}

Injecting this service into components keeps your code modular and reusable.

Visit this link to see a post I made on dependency injection!

5. Overcomplicating Forms

Beginners often use template-driven forms for complex scenarios or mix template-driven and reactive forms in a single project.

Why It’s a Problem

Template-driven forms are easy to start with but become difficult to manage in dynamic or large-scale applications.

How to Avoid It

For complex forms, use reactive forms. They provide better control, scalability, and flexibility. Here’s an example:

this.form = this.fb.group({
  name: ["", Validators.required],
  email: ["", [Validators.required, Validators.email]],
});

Reactive forms make validation and dynamic updates much easier to handle.

CHeck out this article that I wrote on template-driven vs reactive forms!

Conclusion

By avoiding these common Angular pitfalls, you can streamline your development process and build better applications. Remember to embrace the Angular CLI, structure your app with feature modules, optimize performance, leverage dependency injection, and choose the right form strategy for your needs.

Mastering Angular takes time, but with these tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating efficient, maintainable web applications. Happy coding!

Resources

Note:

This post used assistance from ChatGPT for general guidance, references, and content.