Node.JS and NPM with Angular 15 and TypeScript Guide

This article will introduce Node.js to Angular 15 and TypeScript developers. You'll learn what Node.js is, why you'd need it as a front-end Angular developer, and how to utilize it with the most recent Angular 15 version.

We'll also look at what versions of Node.js and TypeScript are required to function with Angular 15.

The Angular framework, Angular CLI, and components used by Angular applications are packaged as npm packages and distributed via the npm registry.

What is Node.js, and why do you need it?

Node.js is a JavaScript environment and platform for running JS on web servers, allowing developers to create backend apps in JS rather than traditional server-side languages like PHP or Java.

Node is also important in that it enables you to create CLI or Command-Line Interfaces that run on the developer's machine. These are not web apps, but rather desktop programs without a graphical user interface that assist developers in being more efficient with a task or framework.

For instance, Angular 15 has an official CLI tool that enables developers to rapidly start and work with projects, and setting up a project for the first time, particularly for newcomers, would be considerably more difficult without this tool.

Angular CLI is based on Node.JS and can be setup via npm, the Node package manager. As a front-end Angular developer, this is your first encounter with Node.JS. You do not need to be familiar with the platform APIs, but you must have them installed on your development machine in order to use the CLI.

So, as an Angular developer, do you need to learn Node.js?

It all depends! Because Node.js is essentially a server-side technology, knowing it is not essential if you exclusively work as a front-end developer. Working with development CLIs such as Angular CLI requires simply learning how to install them on your machine using npm or yarn, a package manager developed by Facebook that was designed to fix many of the npm problems.

On the other hand, if you aim to become a full-stack web developer with both front-end angular and back-end competence; learning Node is required.

Because Node is built on JavaScript or is truly JavaScript plus various APIs for accessing system resources such as databases or the filesystem, learning JavaScript will be lot simpler than learning other server-side technologies such as php.

Because JS is the de facto standard for front-end web development, Angular developers are basically JS developers.

Angular is built on TypeScript, which is just a layer on top of JS that adds static typing to the language.

As a TypeScript developer, you can use Node.js with TypeScript in the same way that you can use client-side JavaScript with TypeScript.

Install Node.JS

Now, if you just need to run the Angular 15 CLI to start creating your front-end project then simply head to the official website and download the right binaries for your system.

You can also install Angular 15 with nvm, or Node Version Manager, which allows to manage multiple versions of Node in your system without conflicts and make it easy to install any version you need.

nvm is a version manager for Node.js, designed to be installed per-user, and invoked per-shell. nvm works on any POSIX-compliant shell (sh, dash, ksh, zsh, bash), in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and windows WSL.

You can install nvm, using the install script.

Head over to your terminal and download and run the script manually, using one of the following cURL or Wget commands:

$ curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.3/install.sh | bash
$ wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.3/install.sh | bash

The script clones the nvm repository in the ~/.nvm folder, and attempts to add the source lines from the snippet below to the correct profile file (~/.bash_profile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bashrc).

export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm

Angular requires a current, active LTS, or maintenance LTS version of Node.js. See the engines key for the specific version requirements in our package.json. To check your version, run node -v in a terminal/console window.

NPM Package Manager

After you install the CLI with npm, you'll also need to npm to install libraries needed by Angular 15, the Angular CLI, and Angular apps. These libraries are available as npm packages.

All these dependencies are downloaded and installed using the npm package manager.

You can check that you have npm installed, by running the npm -v command in your terminal. as npm packages and distributed via the npm registry.

• Date: 20 Nov 2022