Building RESTful Client Apps with Angular.js!

Important [Updated 8/8/13]: Follow the instructions in "Getting Started" here to make sure you have everything set up before getting there:

https://github.com/hsrob/hs-playground

I'd like to share my experience and knowledge (and hear some of yours!) about building Angular.js RESTful client applications. Whether they come in the form of SPAs (Single Page Applications), or a hybrid format with traditional MVW (Model-View-Whatever) server technologies, this kind of application is fast, responsive, and user friendly. It's also in high demand... for those job seekers out there.

A quick overview:

Angular.js is a relatively new contender in the JS framework world, created/maintained by Google! To answer the first question you'll have, and I had, it's not dependent on or an extension of jQuery. It actually includes some stripped down features from jQuery that it uses for DOM manipulation, but that's about it, and it's self-contained.

Angular.js describes itself as a Superheroic Javascript MVW Framework. I’d say that’s pretty close. If you’re ever used Backbone or Knockout, you’ll be right at home, but with some brand new, shiny toys to play with too (custom HTML tags anyone?)

For this Meetup, I’d be happy to take suggestions on things people would like to see built (keep in mind a 1-1.5 hour time limit). Alternatively, I could do the Hello World of web development, walk you through making a To Do List!!! There’s an existing example of using Angular.js to build a To-Do list. I can just work off that to give us a head start, and allow us to dive right into the interesting/extra stuff. I'll provide any insight I can think of, and some extra stuff, like authentication, responsive design including media queries and general concepts. I'd also like to dive into more detail on some of the deeper Angular.js concepts like Services/Factories/Providers, directives (custom HTML tags FTW!), and maybe a quick sneak peek at integrating with an existing REST service (like the Github public API or something similar).

This is going to be the first in a series of two (or more) meetups/presentations on Angular.js and related subjects. In a subsequent meetup, I'll show you how to tie Angular.js in with a server-side technology. We'll add User Auth, permission/role based security, caching, and more! I'll post all the code for the meetups in a public GitHub repo, so you can feel free to check it out, or if you miss anything, just grab the code from there and you'll be all caught up!

Required materials if you wish to follow along:

A laptop of any sort (Mac, Windows, Linux)

Your favorite IDE or text editor. I highly recommend getting the EAP of JetBrains WebStorm 7 here: http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/WI/WebStorm+7+EAP (it should allow you to use it for several weeks before it expires), which has improved Angular.js support. Anything will work though, Sublime Text is good, and even Notepad/Notepad++, we don’t need a compiler or anything special.

Optional: A webserver running locally. Mac folks can check this article for instructions on enabling Apache: http://osxdaily.com/2012/09/02/start-apache-web-server-mac-os-x/ or you can use whatever you prefer. Windows folks will be fine using IIS (instructions for enabling: http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2010/05/04/enabling-iis-on-windows-7/ )

I’m looking forward to seeing you all there