Epic: Upgrade frontend app from AngularJS to Angular (doel project)

[Michiel-s]

Years ago we implemented the frontend app using AngularJS framework. Already for quite some time this framework is not developed further anymore. As of July 1 2018 the entered a 3 year support period. We have every reason to migrate to its successor Angular (https://angular.io/).

The new Angular framework is in many ways easier to understand and work with, but requires a full refactoring of all our frontend code including the templates. It will be a not-backwards compatible change, since customized / project specific templates won’t work anymore.

Key benefits or Angular:

• Uses typescript which enhances the quality of our code
• The Angular CLI which allows to generate boiler plate code and more
• Out of the box support to build the frontend package ng build command. No need for Gulp anymore (which is abandoned anyway). Instead it uses Webpack under the hood.
• It is reactive and we love that. Read more in blog about this
• Makes testing easier.

Read more: https://gorrion.io/blog/angularjs-vs-angular

I propose to open a branch called Angular in both the Ampersand and Prototype repo where we prepare for this step.

I already started and can say that it will take some time. Be patient.

[hanjoosten]

Nice! This looks promising.

[stefjoosten]

Sounds good. Anything we can do to help?

[Michiel-s]

I've created a new repo to start developing the new generation prototype frontend using Angular. It's more convenient to have a separate repo for this, because I think this work will take a while.

https://github.com/AmpersandTarski/prototype-frontend

[Michiel-s]

@hanjoosten can you add a new (temporary) command to the Ampersand compiler to also start the work on the compiler side.

I propose to add something like ampersand tmp-gen-frontend.

The reason why I propose a new command, not reusing ampersand proto is because there will be a split between prototype backend (php framework) and the frontend (new Angular project). For this issue we need to be able to generate only the new frontend and this process will be different than the current process having issue AmpersandTarski/Ampersand#1093 in mind. Instead of downloading/fetching the framework to an output folder and than generating the views, the new process will generate component-views for every interface in an existing folder where all templates are already available.

The backend code only requires a minor addition, and we can use the current ampersand proto command to generate the backend.

[hanjoosten]

PR AmpersandTarski/Ampersand#1250 enables the required functionality in the ampersand generator.