CLI Quickstart

TypeScript

Use the CLI tool to quickly build Angular applications.

Good tools make application development quicker and easier to maintain than if you did everything by hand.

The Angular CLI is a command line interface tool that can create a project, add files, and perform a variety of ongoing development tasks such as testing, bundling, and deployment.

The goal in this guide is to build and run a simple Angular application in TypeScript, using the Angular CLI while adhering to the Style Guide recommendations that benefit every Angular project.

By the end of the chapter, you'll have a basic understanding of development with the CLI and a foundation for both these documentation samples and for real world applications.

You'll pursue these ends in the following high-level steps:

1. Set up the development environment.
2. Create a new project and skeleton application.
3. Serve the application.
4. Edit the application.

And you can also download the example.

Step 1. Set up the Development Environment

You need to set up your development environment before you can do anything.

Install Node.js® and npm if they are not already on your machine.

Verify that you are running at least node 6.9.x and npm 3.x.x by running node -v and npm -v in a terminal/console window. Older versions produce errors, but newer versions are fine.

Then install the Angular CLI globally.

npm install -g @angular/cli

Step 2. Create a new project

Open a terminal window.

Generate a new project and skeleton application by running the following commands:

ng new my-app

Patience please. It takes time to set up a new project, most of it spent installing npm packages.

Step 3: Serve the application

Go to the project directory and launch the server.

cd my-app
ng serve --open

The ng serve command launches the server, watches your files, and rebuilds the app as you make changes to those files.

Using the --open (or just -o) option will automatically open your browser on http://localhost:4200/.

Your app greets you with a message:

Step 4: Edit your first Angular component

The CLI created the first Angular component for you. This is the root component and it is named app-root. You can find it in ./src/app/app.component.ts.

Open the component file and change the title property from app works! to My First Angular App:

export class AppComponent {
  title = 'My First Angular App';
}

The browser reloads automatically with the revised title. That's nice, but it could look better.

Open src/app/app.component.css and give the component some style.

h1 {
  color: #369;
  font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
  font-size: 250%;
}

Looking good!

What's next?

That's about all you'd expect to do in a "Hello, World" app.

You're ready to take the Tour of Heroes Tutorial and build a small application that demonstrates the great things you can build with Angular.

Or you can stick around a bit longer to learn about the files in your brand new project.

Project file review

An Angular CLI project is the foundation for both quick experiments and enterprise solutions.

The first file you should check out is README.md. It has some basic information on how to use CLI commands. Whenever you want to know more about how Angular CLI works make sure to visit the Angular CLI repository and Wiki.

Some of the generated files might be unfamiliar to you.

The src folder

Your app lives in the src folder. All Angular components, templates, styles, images, and anything else your app needs go here. Any files outside of this folder are meant to support building your app.

src
  app
    app.component.css
    app.component.html
    app.component.spec.ts
    app.component.ts
    app.module.ts
  assets
    .gitkeep
  environments
    environment.prod.ts
    environment.ts
  favicon.ico
  index.html
  main.ts
  polyfills.ts
  styles.css
  test.ts
  tsconfig.app.json
  tsconfig.spec.json

The root folder

The src/ folder is just one of the items inside the project's root folder. Other files help you build, test, maintain, document, and deploy the app. These files go in the root folder next to src/.

my-app
  e2e
    app.e2e-spec.ts
    app.po.ts
    tsconfig.e2e.json
  node_modules/...
  src/...
  .angular-cli.json
  .editorconfig
  .gitignore
  karma.conf.js
  package.json
  protractor.conf.js
  README.md
  tsconfig.json
  tslint.json

Next Step

If you're new to Angular, continue on the learning path. You can skip the "Setup" step since you're already using the Angular CLI setup.