Introduction to the Building Angular applications with NX

Speaker introduction and course overview

What is NX?

Difference between Repository and Monorepo

Repository vs Monorepo

Angular and NX - Why?

Advantages of NX

Disadvantages of NX

First module summary

Introduction

Second module introduction

Short lesson about NX installation methods

NX installation

A quick overview of the default suggested directory structure of NX repository.

NX repository folder layout

Second module summary

How to install NX

How to build a simple application and how to create libraries in NX

Third module introduction

Adding the first app

Adding the first library

Code session for the first application and library in NX.

Time tracker code

Third module summary

The first NX Angular application

What else you can keep in monorepo...? Multiple apps using multiple frameworks, built-in Storybook and Cypress configuration

Fourth module introduction

How can you add more apps to monorepo, which frameworks are available at the time, and advantages of keeping them together

Built-in app types in NX

What are buildable and publishable libraries

Built-in library types in NX

Storybook

End-to-end testing

Fourth module summary

More built-in NX features

This module will present a real-life example of an NX mono repository with multiple libraries and three applications.

Fifth module introduction

Presenting the current module's plan, highlighting crucial backend details for the frontend to illustrate the problem domain.

Backend overview

How to migrate simple existing applications to NX

Migrating backend app to NX

How to extract library with DTOs classes from backend app and prepare it to be shared with frontend application

Extracting shared DTO library

Let's look at how our final application should look like

Design overview

Add new Angular apps to the existing NX repository

Adding new Angular apps to existing monorepo

Adding Storybook to monorepo - different approach

Using previously configured Storybook in this lesson we will create and prepare a few common components that later we’ll use in apps.

Adding common components. Card, Button, Input, List, ListItem

Adding a domain library for RoomList, RoomBackground and RoomTimelineList that I missed in previous lessons

Constructing the services of the application

Constructing the application - Services

Constructing the Admin application

Constructing the Room application

How to prepare the application to work offline

Preparing the Room applications to work offline

Summary of building a real-life application with NX

Lessons learned and homework

Building a real life application with NX

Sixth module introduction

What is the dependency graph in NX, and how does it help you with developer experience

Dependency graph - what is it?

Why it’s important to keep the dependencies organized

Importance of keeping dependencies in order

How to run unit tests and lint only on the affected parts of the dependency graph

Affected

How to deal with the most common examples of circular dependencies

Dealing with circular dependencies

Sixth module summary

Dependency graph

Seventh module introduction

How to automatically migrate simple applications to the NX mono repository

Automatic migration of existing applications

How to manually migrate complex applications to the NX mono repository

Manual migration of existing applications

What may be the problem during migration of big, stale existing codebases

Analysis of potential problems in migration of big existing codebases

Tips. The migration plan

Why defining a target architecture may be an important step of the migration process

Tips. Target architecture

Seventh module summary

Migrating existing applications to NX

What you have learned from this course

Contact info and final words from the author

Final words

Summary

### Challenges and solutions in building large Angular apps

In large Angular applications, developers face several significant challenges. One major issue is managing complexity. These apps have lots of components, services, and modules that all need to work together smoothly. Keeping everything organized and easy to understand can be tough, especially with a big team.

Another problem is build times. As the app grows, it can take longer and longer for changes to show up during development. This can slow down the development process and make it harder to stay productive.

Dependency management is another headache. This involves making sure all the different parts of the app work well together and play nicely with outside libraries. 

### Tool limitations

Even experienced teams can struggle with managing large Angular applications without using the right tools. Organizing numerous components, services, and modules becomes challenging without tools that aid in clarity and team collaboration. Utilizing appropriate tools is key for experienced teams to successfully navigate the complexities of large Angular projects.

### Fixing problems with NX

NX offers several benefits for managing large Angular applications. It helps reduce the time it takes to build projects and keeps code well-organized by managing dependencies and structuring code into reusable parts. This makes it easier to maintain and expand applications over time.

One of NX's strengths is its ability to speed up builds. It does this by remembering previous build results and doing multiple tasks at the same time. This saves developers time and lets them make changes quickly.

NX also comes with tools for testing and checking code quality. It works well with common testing tools and helps keep code clean and consistent. This catches mistakes early and ensures code stays high-quality.

Furthermore, NX makes it easy to work together on projects. It keeps all code and shared parts in one place, making it simpler to share code between different projects or teams. This improves teamwork, reduces problems with combining code, and makes development smoother overall.

Comprehensive guide to Angular and NX: Build, migrate, and decompose your Applications

Learn how to create and maintain Angular applications using NX. 
Designed for Angular developers, this course covers best practices, improving workflow, and migrating existing applications to NX. 
Discover how to configure tools like Cypress for end-to-end testing and Storybook for UI component development. 
By the end of this course, you will have the knowledge and experience to work comfortably with NX on a daily basis.

Building Angular applications with NX

Build a simple time tracker application using NX monorepo.

Create a real-life NX monorepo with three applications. The main goal of these applications is to display the schedule for conference rooms on screens mounted to the doors of the respective rooms.

Build an admin panel as one of the applications to manage the schedule data for the conference rooms.

Use NX graph feature to visualize application architecture.

What is a monorepo approach and how it might help you

Differences between Angular CLI projects and NX projects

How to create Angular applications using NX

How to add Cypress and Storybook to your NX monorepo

How to migrate existing Angular applications to NX monorepo

What is a dependency graph and how to use it to save your time

How to prepare migration even for big and complicated projects

When you decompose your application into libraries, NX is tracking dependencies.
It knows which library is used in which application, etc. It's crucial
because if you want to know what exactly changed in your application
and which other parts were affected. You have to know precisely about connections in your application.
In this case, the code structures you built are pretty similar to living organisms.

How do we visualize such libraries and the connection between them?
Imagine that we have an 

.
If we try to draw it, you'll notice it creates a graph.

Fortunately, we don't need to draw a graph by hand using NX.
Access the code of the application we created in the previous module.
Execute the command from the box below to display the graph for that NX mono repository.

By default, the graph is empty.
The reason for that is if you try by default to display all packages in a huge repository, it's possible
that it won't load and will freeze your computer.
Not the best first impression, right?

Our application is not that big,
so I will use the main filtering panel to display all projects,
but if you want, you can use a list of all packages to display dependencies between selected packages.

---
title: Dependency graph - what is it?
description: What is the dependency graph in NX, and how does it help you with developer experience
code: https://gitlab.com/fullstackio/books/newline-course-apps/building-angular-applications-with-nx-app/-/tree/main/manuscript/code/05.02-graph?ref_type=heads
privateVideoUrl: https://stream.mux.com/trfDHZ02aRYitrbP024bOVBT7kB01F5HF4VLSYT8AZgFqM.m3u8
---

When you decompose your application into libraries, NX is tracking dependencies.
It knows which library is used in which application, etc. It's crucial
because if you want to know what exactly changed in your application
and which other parts were affected. You have to know precisely about connections in your application.
In this case, the code structures you built are pretty similar to living organisms.

How do we visualize such libraries and the connection between them?
Imagine that we have an `app` that depends on two libraries: `forms-lib` and `buttons-lib`.
The first one depends on `inputs-lib`.
If we try to draw it, you'll notice it creates a graph.

![Dependencies as a graph](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/building-angular-applications-with-nx/module_06/lesson_06.02/public/images/05-02-01.png)

Fortunately, we don't need to draw a graph by hand using NX.
Access the code of the application we created in the previous module.
Execute the command from the box below to display the graph for that NX mono repository.

```bash
yarn run nx graph
```

By default, the graph is empty.
The reason for that is if you try by default to display all packages in a huge repository, it's possible
that it won't load and will freeze your computer.
Not the best first impression, right?

![Empty graph](https://d2uusema5elisf.cloudfront.net/courses/building-angular-applications-with-nx/module_06/lesson_06.02/public/images/05-02-02.png)

Our application is not that big,
so I will use the main filtering panel to display all projects,
but if you want, you can use a list of all packages to display dependencies between selected packages.

galczo5

When you decompose your application into libraries,

which means that NX knows exactly which libraries will be used to build your

NX is building only necessary parts of your application,

So to know it, NX has to track dependencies.

And as I said, it's a crucial part of NX.

We have forms library, buttons library, and inputs library.

And our forms library depends on inputs library.

And the whole app depends on forms library and buttons library.

Under the hood, NX is building the dependency graph of your monorepo.

if we want to check how our application is built,

NX has a building command to print the graph,

so we can check how our application looks like.

After a second, you can access localhost 4211/projects

we have a whole application to manipulate it,

to hide some parts that are not interesting at the moment.

on the applications that are important for us.

So for now, let's click on show all projects.

And this is how our conference monorepo application looks like.

So we have our room front-end application,

We can check all the libraries that are connected

Or for example, room list is depending on cart and room background.

So let's say that I want to hide some things

and then click on the i icon to hide them.

Let's say that I want to hide live projects here.

and it's quite easy to track all these dependencies.

For example, you can filter the graph using this filter input.

and we have only one library that is called rooms.

As you can see, it prints the topology of your code.

You can check where the code is in the file system.

So, annex graph is not only an excellent addition

but it should help you with your and your team developer experience.

For example, when you onboard a new person,

They can group by the folder to check where the code is.

It's way easier to explain how your application works

The second reason why graph is good for developer experience

You can easily download using this download button,

your graph, and then save it in your wiki page,

What's more, you can do this from time to time

You can check which parts are growing to big,

What's more, you can even try to use this as a planning tool.

"Okay, so that's how it will look like after my change."

Then you can use these plans to compare them.

You can find the best solution using just the graph.

As you can imagine, there are so many potential usages of annex graph.

And the best way to get know them is to experience with them.

So I want to encourage you after this lesson to run yarn,