A Thorough Analysis: Blazor vs Angular
Businesses usually face a conundrum in the field of web app development when deciding between Angular and Blazor. Both frameworks have unique benefits and are well-respected in the technology world. Large-scale projects are best suited for the open-source, JavaScript-based framework Angular, which specializes in creating single-page applications. Its reasonably controllable learning curve makes it a desirable choice for developers.
In contrast, the open-source Blazor framework, which is built on .NET, enables developers to create dynamic web apps. Although the two frameworks are similar, they differ in a number of ways, which frequently leaves firms perplexed. This blog post is specifically designed for those who are starting to develop web apps in 2024 and are having trouble deciding between Blazor and Angular.
It comprehensively examines the nuances of Angular and Blazor, shedding light on their key disparities. Let’s delve into each framework to elucidate their distinctions.
Blazor vs Angular: An Overview
Angular, originally known as AngularJS until 2016, is a robust JavaScript framework enabling the creation of native mobile and desktop apps alongside client web applications within the browser. Designed to facilitate seamless interaction between frontend and backend for developers, Angular simplifies maintenance tasks for languages like C# or Java, previously handled separately. By leveraging Angular, developers can streamline deployment targets, optimizing code reuse and application building capabilities for Angular web app development.
The rise of Single Page Applications (SPAs) further bolstered Angular’s prominence and paved the way for the emergence of frameworks like Blazor from Microsoft. Blazor, a novel web development framework introduced by Microsoft, empowers developers to craft single-page web applications using .NET. Leveraging C# and Razor syntax alongside HTML and CSS, Blazor facilitates the development of interactive and reusable web user interfaces for client-side applications. Its foundation on .NET and implementation under WebAssembly grants Blazor the ability to harness the full power of Microsoft’s framework, both on the client and server sides. With Blazor, developers can seamlessly share code and libraries, providing a comprehensive platform for the creation of modern Single Page Application (SPA) platforms utilizing .NET throughout the development process.
Now equipped with a basic understanding of Blazor and Angular, let’s embark on a deeper exploration of their comparative strengths and features in the context of Blazor vs Angular.
Comparison Between Blazor and Angular
Angular offers a plethora of options in terms of component libraries. You can find the list of official Angular-supported tooling, including IDEs, UI components, and data libraries, among others, in this link.
Maturity
Angular has been a mainstay in the development scene for a considerable amount of time, unlike Blazor. It is a mature and production-ready framework that fully supports MVC/MVVM applications, and it has been widely adopted by numerous large organizations. Conversely, Blazor web development has been evolving rapidly but has yet to achieve the level of maturity comparable to Angular, despite its promising trajectory. Angular surpasses Blazor in terms of tooling support, with extensive backing for VS Code or development environments that Blazor has only recently started to implement.
Regarding libraries, Angular Material stands out as one of the most popular, especially because it embraces Google’s Material Design, a design language prevalent in Google products. Apart from that, Angular offers other significant design libraries such as Bootstrap, through the NG Bootstrap library, or PrimeNG, for instance.
Additionally, Angular provides various options for component libraries. Blazor, however, has been developing its own unique version of the Material Design library but has yet to achieve the same level of development.
Community
With 63.7k stars and 17.2k forks in its GitHub repository, Angular is incredibly popular and regarded as one of the most significant and well-liked frontend frameworks. Since moving to the ASP.NET Core source, Blazor, as a component of the ASP.NET project, has had difficulties in measuring its popularity. Blazor has accumulated 700 forks and 9.2k stars before to the move. We won’t cover the ASP.NET Core specifics because they involve a number of factors that go beyond Blazor.
Another significant metric is Stack Overflow. Angular alone has amassed a total of 224.3k questions recently, whereas Blazor has only 2.9k questions.
A comparison on Google Trends between Angular and Blazor underscores the disparity even more. Angular, having been in existence for much longer, has cultivated a broader community with more resources, courses, books, blogs, and materials compared to Blazor.
PWA Support
Progressive web apps (PWAs) enjoy substantial support, with both Google and Angular endorsing them.
Integration of PWA support into Angular applications can be achieved simply by executing:
ng add @angular/pwaYou can explore similar solutions for other Google projects, such as the popular Workbox, for example.
For a considerable period, Blazor was perceived as a framework unsuitable for Progressive Web Applications (PWAs). However, they have recently announced PWA support, alongside several other ongoing developments within Blazor. Despite this progress, some developers express concerns about the initial download size of Blazor applications being excessively large, whereas smaller bundle sizes are deemed essential for Single Page Applications (SPAs).
Nevertheless, the community remains hopeful about the evolving PWA support in Blazor.
Scoped Styles
Similar to many other web frameworks and libraries, Angular allows the use of scoped styles, enabling you to apply CSS styles explicitly to a specific component, for instance:
@Component({
selector: 'app-root',
template: `
<h1>Title H1</h1>
<app-test-main [title]="title"></app-test-main>
`,
styles: ['h1 { font-weight: normal; color: red; text-transform:
uppercase; }']
})
export class AppComponent {
...
}
However, Blazor does not include this intriguing functionality, although there are individuals experimenting with alternative solutions.
Build / Coding Time
In the comparison between Angular and Blazor, Blazor stands out for its rapid build and troubleshooting processes. It leverages Visual Studio and its comprehensive suite of tools and components. As a result, development and debugging can be expedited significantly, contingent upon your level of familiarity and expertise with them.
Additionally, Blazor offers the notable live reloading feature during development, which can be set up swiftly:
// Add NuGet package:
dotnet add package RazorComponentsPreview
// Add to the StartUp class:
services.AddRazorComponentsRuntimeCompilation();
app.UseRazorComponentsRuntimeCompilation();
This feature heavily relies on assembly and build times. Performance comparison between Angular and Blazor regarding the same functionality hinges on the latter being several times faster, including builds running in CI/CD pipelines.
In terms of coding, Angular is renowned for its adherence to standards. With Blazor, you’re operating in the backend, allowing you to write methods on services that can be directly invoked from upper layers, as opposed to going through an entire API structure call, as you would with Angular.
Async Nature
While Angular harnesses the inherent async nature inherited from JavaScript, it also utilizes the powerful RxJS to handle asynchronous tasks. C# has evolved to support asynchronous operations out of the box in a convenient and clean manner. At times, you may even find that some implementations are strikingly similar between both technologies.
For example, envision two client applications created with Angular and Blazor, respectively, consuming from the same API endpoint. Indeed, they function similarly in both Blazor and Angular.
Due to their asynchronous nature, we would have the following code for both calls:
// Angular
async getUserData() {
return await this.httpClient.get<User>("api/users").toPromise();
}
// Blazor
public async Task GetUserData()
{
return await Http.GetFromJsonAsync<User[]>("api/users");
}
Constructing Your UI with Angular
Angular adopts a component-based approach for UI building. It heavily relies on TypeScript, which is then transpiled into standard JavaScript for execution in the browser. A combination of standard HTML and Angular syntax is used to handle DOM events and data display. Angular UI comprises one or more components typically authored using specialized Angular directives. The Angular UI operates within the browser’s JavaScript engine.
In contrast, Blazor follows a fundamentally similar approach to Angular for UI construction, utilizing components. However, instead of Angular directives and JavaScript, you employ Razor and C# to write your markup and UI logic.
Initiating a New Application
Angular provides its own Command Line Interface (CLI) for project creation and generating application code.
Install it by utilizing Yarn or npm
npm install -g @angular/cli
The CLI presents you with several options, including specifying whether you want to include Angular Routing and selecting the desired template design (CSS, SCSS, etc.).
Afterward, you can launch your application by executing the following command:
ng serveFor Blazor, you can utilize Visual Studio or the .NET Core CLI (which is included with the .NET Core SDK).
PowerShell
dotnet new blazorwasm
cd blazorwasm
dotnet run
Other options exist as well, such as the ability to integrate a client-side validation framework and choosing whether to embed your Blazor application within an ASP.NET web application. However, the command above represents the simplest option to get started.
Passing Data Around
We’ve already explored one method of managing state in Angular components by storing it in a field. However, another common approach is to pass values into a component, for example,
<app-hi world headline="Welcome, it's extraordinary to see you"></application hi world>Angular allows us to modify our component to accept a headline by adding an @Input decorator to the existing HelloWorldComponent class.
export class HelloWorldComponent implements OnInit {
@Input() headline: string;
// existing code
}
Now, we can pass a value or feature into our component, but it isn’t rendered anywhere yet. To address this, we can utilize Angular’s interpolation syntax {{ }} to display the value of the headline wherever desired.
Unlike Angular, Blazor also offers two primary options for managing state. You can store data directly within the component using properties or accept data through parameters.
<h2>@Headline</h2>
<label>What's your name?</label>
<input type="text" @bind-value="Name" @bind-value:event="oninput"
placeholder="Bob"/>
<span>Hello @Name</span>
@code {
[Parameter]
public string Headline { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
In the @code section of our component, a Headline parameter has been declared.
Routing
In numerous applications, managing routes is essential.
For instance, when someone accesses “/about”, they may view your “about” page.
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { Routes, RouterModule } from '@angular/router';
import {HelloWorldComponent} from "./hello-world/hello-world.component";
const routes: Routes = [
{ path: 'greetMe', component: HelloWorldComponent}
];
@NgModule({
imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)],
exports: [RouterModule]
})
export class AppRoutingModule { }
In the comparison between Blazor and Angular, Blazor relies on ASP.NET’s existing routing engine and includes routing functionality “out of the box,” whereas Angular manages routes through @angular/switch and automatically looks for routes defined in an array within the application’s routing module (routing.module.ts).
You can easily make any Blazor component “routable” by adding a @page directive at the top of your component.
@page "/GreetMe"
<h1>
Welcome!
</h1>
HTML
Now, any request to http://<your-web-site-here>/GreetMe will be directed to this component.
Additionally, data can be passed in via the route using this command:
@page "/GreetMe/{Name}"
<h1>
Welcome @Name!
</h1>
@code {
[Parameter]
public string Name { get; set; }
HTML This will display a more personalized greeting for any request to http://<your-web-site-here>/GreetMe/Jon
Fetching data from an API
Angular advocates for using services to retrieve or store data in your components.
The principle is that the component itself should be unaware of the specific details of how data is fetched or stored.
You can generate a service using the Angular CLI:
ng create administration ticketPowerShell
The following commands can be utilized to retrieve a service for support tickets.
ticket.service.ts
import {Injectable} from '@angular/core';
import {HttpClient} from "@angular/common/http";
import {Observable} from "rxjs";
@Injectable({
providedIn: 'root'
})
export class TicketService {
constructor(private http: HttpClient) {
}
getTickets(): Observable<Ticket[]> {
return this.http.get<Ticket[]>('api/Tickets');
}
}
class Ticket {
id: number;
name: string;
summary: string;
}
Blazor, on the other hand, relies on .NET’s HttpClient for fetching data.
Under the hood, this leverages the native fetch API, but you can always overlook that and utilize the abstraction.
For instance:
@using System.Net.Http
@inject HttpClient Http
@foreach(var ticket in _tickets){
<div> @ticket.Title </div>
}
@code {
private Tickets[] _tickets;
protected override async Task OnInitializedAsync(){
_tickets = await Http.GetFromJsonAsync<TicketSummary>
("api/Tickets");
}
}
With Angular, this task could be seamlessly transferred to a separate service and injected into your component, thereby avoiding direct calls to HttpClient.
@inject TicketService TicketsBlazor possesses a valuable advantage compared to Angular or any other existing frontend framework when it comes to the interaction between your UI and API.
Angular Vs Blazor: Making the Right Choice
From this blog post, it becomes evident that both Blazor and Angular stand out as open-source and robust web app development frameworks. The primary objective of these frameworks is to address the challenges encountered by the front-end development community.
In comparison to Angular, the Blazor framework demonstrates considerable power and flexibility. However, opting for Angular development solutions remains a viable choice if you seek cost-effective web app development assistance.
Get in touch with a reputable AngularJS development company like PSSPL. Our team of experts will assist you in crafting the ideal application tailored to your business requirements and preferences.
Happy Reading!
