/angular

name: angular
description: Use when building Angular applications. Covers standalone components, signals, RxJS discipline, change detection, dependency injection, and the patterns that keep large Angular codebases fast. Trigger on "subscription memory leak", "migrate to standalone components", "change detection is slow", "signals or rxjs for this state". Do not use for app-wide folder and state structure — see the frontend-architecture skill.
metadata:
  category: frontend
  version: 1.0.0
  tags: [angular, signals, rxjs, change-detection, typescript]

Angular

Purpose

Build modern Angular — standalone components, signals for state, RxJS only where streams genuinely help — and keep change detection from becoming the bottleneck it becomes by default.

When to Use

• Building or reviewing an Angular 17+ application.
• Migrating from NgModules to standalone components, or from RxJS state to signals.
• Diagnosing performance problems caused by change detection.
• Preventing subscription leaks.

Capabilities

• Standalone components, directives, and functional route guards.
• Signals: `signal`, `computed`, `effect`, and `toSignal` interop with RxJS.
• Change detection: `OnPush`, zoneless, and what triggers a check.
• RxJS operators for the cases where a stream is the right model.
• Dependency injection with `inject()` and provider scoping.

Inputs

• The component or feature, and its data sources.
• Angular version, and whether zone.js is still in use.
• The performance symptom, if any.

Outputs

• Standalone components with `OnPush` change detection.
• State in signals; asynchronous events in observables, converted at the boundary.
• No manual subscriptions without a matching teardown.

Workflow

1. **Go standalone** — NgModules are legacy. Standalone components with explicit `imports` make the dependency graph readable. 2. **Use signals for state** — Synchronous, glitch-free, and integrated with change detection. Reserve RxJS for genuine streams: HTTP, WebSockets, user-input debouncing. 3. **Set `OnPush` everywhere** — Default change detection re-checks the entire component tree on every event. `OnPush` limits it to inputs that actually changed. 4. **Convert at the boundary** — `toSignal(this.http.get(...))` brings an observable into the signal world. Do not maintain state in a `BehaviorSubject` and mirror it into a signal. 5. **Never subscribe manually without teardown** — `takeUntilDestroyed()` or the `async` pipe. A subscription without an unsubscribe is a leak with a component attached.

Best Practices

• Do not call methods from the template (`{{ getTotal() }}`). They run on every change-detection cycle. Use a `computed` signal.
• `subscribe()` inside `subscribe()` is a nested-subscription bug. Flatten with `switchMap`, `mergeMap`, or `concatMap` — chosen for the cancellation semantics you actually want.
• `switchMap` cancels the previous request, which is correct for typeahead and wrong for saving a form. Pick deliberately.
• Provide services at the component level when the state is component-scoped; `providedIn: 'root'` makes it a singleton shared by every consumer.
• `effect()` is for side effects only. Writing to a signal inside an effect creates a loop that Angular will warn about, and it usually means you wanted `computed`.
• Zoneless change detection (Angular 18+) removes zone.js entirely and requires signals throughout. It is worth targeting for new applications.

Examples

**Signal state with an RxJS boundary:**

@Component({
  selector: "app-order-list",
  standalone: true,
  changeDetection: ChangeDetectionStrategy.OnPush,
  imports: [OrderCardComponent],
  template: `
    @if (orders.isLoading()) {
      <app-skeleton />
    } @else {
      @for (order of visibleOrders(); track order.id) {
        <app-order-card [order]="order" />
      } @empty {
        <p>No orders match this filter.</p>
      }
    }
  `,
})
export class OrderListComponent {
  private readonly api = inject(OrderApi);

  readonly status = signal<OrderStatus>("open");
  readonly orders = rxResource({
    request: () => ({ status: this.status() }),
    loader: ({ request }) => this.api.list(request.status),
  });

  // Derived state, recomputed only when its dependencies change.
  readonly visibleOrders = computed(() =>
    (this.orders.value() ?? []).filter((o) => !o.archived),
  );
}

**Subscription teardown without ceremony:**

export class SearchComponent {
  private readonly destroyRef = inject(DestroyRef);

  constructor() {
    this.searchControl.valueChanges
      .pipe(
        debounceTime(300),
        distinctUntilChanged(),
        switchMap((q) => this.api.search(q)),   // cancels the in-flight request
        takeUntilDestroyed(this.destroyRef),    // unsubscribes on destroy
      )
      .subscribe((results) => this.results.set(results));
  }
}

Notes

• The new control-flow syntax (`@if`, `@for`, `@switch`) is not sugar — it compiles to more efficient code than `*ngIf` and `*ngFor`, and `track` is mandatory in `@for`, which eliminates a whole class of list-diffing bugs.
• `OnPush` with mutable objects will not update: it compares references. Either treat inputs as immutable or use signals, which notify explicitly.
• A `computed` signal that reads another `computed` is fine and does not recompute unnecessarily — the graph is lazy and memoized.