Getting started

1. Download project files

Once we have our environment ready (i.e. npm installed). Let's download the working files. We can do it in two ways:

1.1 GIT repository

In order to download the working files, open a console and type:

git clone https://github.com/girishgodage/AngularTutorialAgendaApp.git

1.2 ZIP file

If for some reason you don't want to use Git directly, you can simply download as zip file and extract it.

Info:
The working directory contains multiple folders for each section (getting-started, agenda-app) and inside those are other folders called lesson-x where x is the number of the lesson. Each of the folders contains the final code from a given lesson. In case of facing issues you can always refer to the corresponding lesson folder, check final code and compare with yours to spot the difference.

2. Open project

Open a project in your favorite editor. I use and recommend Visual Studio Code (VSC) from Microsoft

In order to open a project using VSC:

1. Open VSC
2. File > Open Folder
3. Navigate to getting-started/start-here folder
4. Click on Select Folder

3. Start project

In order to start a project we will use Node Package Manager (npm). Make sure you have npm installed in order to verify that you can open a default terminal/command line:

1. Open Command line (below instruction how to open it for Windows, MacOS and Linux)
• 
  Windows
• 
  macOS
• 
  Linux
How to run command line?
Keyboard shortcut:
On your keyboard press: + R . You will see Run windows. Type cmd and click OK or press Enter

You will see a screen like below:

That's it. You can now use a command line, however, please keep in mind that Windows Command Line is - frankly speaking - a crappy tool. That's why we strongly encourage you to use some alternative such as GitBash (installation guide here). It has more Unix-like commands that are more user-friendly than built in windows commands.
How to run command line?
Keyboard shortcut:
Press cmd ⌘ + space to open Spotlight search, then type terminal and hit Enter ⏎

You will see a screen lke below:

Unix unlike Windows or macOS, doesn't necessarily have a Graphic User Interface (GUI), therefore in some distributions like RedHat, CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu Server the terminal will launch immediately after bootin up the machine.
In case you use a GUI, they may look different. However in most cases you they will have Windows-like "Start" button which will open the search menu that allow you to find terminal app.
Sample start screen on Ubuntu:

Also terminal windows and colors may vary depending on the distribution, - here is a sample Ubuntu terminal:



2. Type npm -v and press Enter

If you can see the version of npm we can start the project (go to the next step). Otherwise you have to install npm first. Here you can find the guide on how to do it.

3. Navigate to the project location using the command cd (the location on your computer will be different):

cd C:\AngularApp\tutorial\AngularTutorialAgendaApp\getting-started\start-here>

4. Install dependencies using the npm install command
5. Start the project using the npm start command


Note:
When you run npm start command npm will invoke another command underneath: ng serve

ng serve is an Angular CLI command so you can use it directly to run your project instead of npm start

6. Open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:4200

4. Hello World!

1. Open the src/app/app.component.html file.
2. Replace the content of the file with Hello World.

3. Check the result in a browser:


Voila! Our application is running. That was easy, wasn't it? Now let's have a closer look at our project structure to understand how Angular project works.

5. Project structure

Let's have a look at the files within our project. There are multiple folders and files and each is responsible for a variety of functionalities, however you don't have to know all of them, for now, I will introduce you to the key files and directories within our project.

1. The node_modules directory is where all of the libraries we need to build Angular are stored.
2. In the src directory, is placed the source code of your application.
3. The app/ folder contains file related to our initial App component:
4. The app.component.html contains template of the component
5. The app.component.scss contains the CSS styles for the component
6. The app.component.spec.ts contains the tests of our component
7. The app.component.ts contains a TypeScript code (logic) of the component
8. The app.module.ts contains the configuration of the App module
9. In the assets directory, you place any static assets like images or icons.
10. index.html is the main file of our app.

If we peek inside our index.html file, we can see there’s a element <app-root></app-root>, which will generate (render) our App component in the following place.


11. The styles.scss contains the global styles for our application

Note:
Within the project you can either use CSS, SASS, Less and Stylus. In case of CSS you would see the style.css file within your project. Since we are using SASS (the more powerfull CSS), there is style.scss file (note different extension).

The configuration whether project uses CSS or SASS is kept in angular.json file. We will learn how to switch between both in a future lesson. You can learn more about SASS here.

12. The angular.json file contains the configuration of our app.

In the next lesson, we will learn how to use build sample components.

Important!
I am very happy that you reached this far. I would like to thank you and ask you for a small favor. Please provide your comment on this lesson.

Your feedback is very important to us!. Please let us know what you liked and what you didn't like to help us make later tutorials better and better!

It would be awesome if after each lesson you would be so kind and provide your comment on lesson. I would appreciate that! Thanks!