Angular is a powerful feature-rich platform that you can use to create all kinds of single-page apps, ranging from simple sites to more intricate ones. With it, you can build efficient native, web, and mobile apps with a wide range of tools and libraries it integrates. However, there are still ways apps built with it can be improved. For example, using Angular Universal, you can render your apps server-side to speed up page loads and improve SEO and performance.
Server-side rendering involves converting an app to HTML on a server. When you send a request for a particular path to the server, it returns an entirely static HTML page as a response. No additional requests need to be made to populate the page with data and resources as it is all contained in the response. The page appears almost precisely how it would be rendered client-side in the DOM but may sometimes have limited functionality.
Angular Universal is a set of tools that render Angular apps server-side. On the server, the Universal template engine takes an Angular app and creates static pages when a request is made. The pages are then forwarded to the client. It’s likely called universal since it executes on other platforms besides a browser.
Server-side rendered apps load quicker to users. A static page is shown to the user to engage them as the rest of the application loads. The static pages that Angular Universal provides are simple to index when search engine web crawlers access them. This server-side rendering improves the SEO score of a site. In addition, SSR pages offer a better user experience, especially on less capable devices that may have trouble running full Angular apps.
Strapi is an open-source content API. Data from it can be consumed using REST or GraphQL. With it, you can set up APIs relatively fast. It also provides an admin panel where you can manage the API and content. You can use it with several different databases such as SQLite, MySQL, PostgresSQL, MongoDB, etc. Additionally, it is highly customizable and offers numerous plugins to supplement the API.
This article will cover how to use Strapi with an Angular Universal app. First, you’ll set up a Strapi server. Then you will create an Angular Universal app that will consume data from Strapi.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, you need to have Node installed. You can find out how to get it here. The version of Node needs to be at minimum 12 and at most 14. You also have to have the Angular CLI installed. This guide will walk you through how to do this.
#angular #angular-universal #strapi #universal-app
