Angular and Django integration into one project

For those times, when you ought to do things which you don't want to do.

Requirements: Django > 1.8, Angular 8, 9 or above. I've done this Angular 9.

Let's jump directly into a pool, I'm guessing, you already have a basic Django setup, which is:

- Vritualenv setup
- Django project
- Static files and template files setup

- Vritualenv setup
- Django project
- Static files and template files setup

Start by installing angular cli into your local.

shell

npm install -g @angular/cli

shell

npm install -g @angular/cli

if you are on windows', please set the path of the ng command. Otherwise, you can use npm run ng <your ng command> for the rest of the article.

In Django, create a Landing view and URL pointing to that view. And render a template which you're going to use for Angular. Let's say angular_index.html which is residing into Django templates dir.
Now, from command-line, create a new angular project names frontend into a Django static directory. ng new frontend
Now your Angular apps basic structure is done, for testing, run ng build. This will compile your code and produce some files into dist directory which will be created into a frontend (your angular app)` directory.
Now go into angular_index.html and include these compiled files runtime-es2015.js, polyfills.js, styles-es2015.js, vendor-es2015.js, main-es2015.js into Django template js block.

<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/runtime-es2015.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/polyfills-es2015.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/styles-es2015.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/vendor-es2015.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/main-es2015.js' %}"></script>

<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/runtime-es2015.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/polyfills-es2015.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/styles-es2015.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/vendor-es2015.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/main-es2015.js' %}"></script>

And now you're almost done, just add

html

 
<body>
<app-root></app-root>
</body>

html

 
<body>
<app-root></app-root>
</body>

into angular_index.html and run your python server by

shell

python manage.py runserver

shell

python manage.py runserver

Goto your defined URL for your angular app and you'll be seeing the app. Up until now, everything is working fine, but the problem is every time you do some code change, you have run ng build to compile the angular code and then see the changes reflect in the browser.

So you might be thinking, why not use ng serve, yes ng serve is a great option. But the sad part is, it does not provide us with the compiled files. it saves those files in the memory. So we need to use watch option in ng build for development purpose.

Run ng build --watch into a terminal and it will hot reload your project with every file change. But now, your browser will not show anything. Because at watch state, ng build --watch produces different filenames without postfix of es2015. So you need to change those files names in the angular_index.html and include the following files.

<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/runtime.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/polyfills.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/styles.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/vendor.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/main.js' %}"></script>

<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/runtime.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/polyfills.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/styles.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/vendor.js' %}"></script>
<script type="type/javascript" src="{% static 'frontend/dist/main.js' %}"></script>

For better configuration, you can get the environment from settings.py and with the help of if condition, you can set the files according to the environment. Just in case, if you add support for IE, there will extra file which will generate. You need to add that file to render everything perfectly.

🙏

For those times, when you ought to do things which you don't want to do.

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