Book Review - AngularJS by Example

I have just finished reading the book AngularJS by Example authored by Chandermani Arora. I will share my views on this book in this post.

A typical technology book starts with concepts on the technology and it continues to explain the technology throughout the book with independent examples. This book takes a different approach and start building an application right from beginning of the book. It continues adding features to the same example while explaining different concepts of the framework and covering internal details wherever needed.

Presentation of the entire book can be summarized into following the bullet points:

• Starts with a brief discussion on problems with building large JavaScript applications. Explains need of patterns like MVC in the ecosystem
• Doesn't build a regular "Hello World" sample, instead builds an interesting sample to cover basic constructs of the framework
• Before building any step of the sample, the author spends time in explaining the problem, then tells which feature solves the problem and then explains the feature thoroughly before implementing the next step
• Covers a number of tips through examples
• Makes good use of the notes section to clarify some basics and lesser known facts
• No concept is explained independently. Most of the necessary features of the framework are covered with right examples that are very close to real world problems
• I particularly like the way some features like animations, ng-model, interceptors and testing are explained in the book
• Last chapter focuses on a few common scenarios and provides advice containing best practices to solve these problems

This book doesn't just helps someone in gaining knowledge on AngularJS, but also teaches the needs of the features. Once you finish reading the book by following along with it and build the sample, you will have a self-built reference application that you can refer in the future.

The content in this book is relevant to both beginners and experienced developers working on AngularJS. A thorough read of this book will help you in mastering essential parts of the framework. You will also be able to answer most of the common interview questions once you read this book :).

Happy coding!