Angular 20 Refactor: Clean Architecture & 90% Test Coverage

Hey guys! We've got a mission to level up our Angular 20 project! Our goals are to implement Angular 20 best practices, refactor for a clean architecture, and nail that 90% unit test coverage. Let's dive in and make our app rock solid!

1. Embracing Angular 20 Best Practices

Angular 20 best practices are crucial for creating a scalable, maintainable, and efficient application. When embarking on a new Angular project or revamping an existing one, it's essential to adhere to these best practices to ensure the long-term health and success of the application. Let's get this bread and break down these key improvements we'll be making. First off, we're going to update those dependencies to Angular 20. This ensures we're leveraging the latest features, performance improvements, and security patches. Staying up-to-date is a cornerstone of modern web development, as it allows us to take advantage of the newest tools and techniques the framework offers. Angular 20 brings some cool features that can significantly improve our app's performance and structure.

Next up, we're diving deep into Standalone Components where possible. Standalone Components are a game-changer, simplifying our module structure and making our components more portable and easier to reuse. By embracing Standalone Components, we can reduce the complexity of our application and streamline the development process. This is all about making our components self-sufficient and reducing the overhead of NgModules. We'll be converting our existing components to this new style where it makes sense, making our codebase cleaner and more maintainable. Then, let's talk about Signals and Zoneless. If they fit our needs, we'll be implementing these to boost our app's reactivity and performance. Signals provide a fine-grained reactivity system that can help us optimize change detection, while moving towards a zoneless architecture can reduce overhead and improve performance. This is some cutting-edge stuff, and we're excited to explore how it can benefit our app.

Typed Forms are another big one. We're going all-in on those, along with strict TypeScript typing. This is about catching errors early and making our code more robust. By leveraging the power of TypeScript's type system, we can prevent common bugs and improve the overall quality of our application. This also helps with code maintainability, as types serve as a form of documentation. Plus, we're optimizing lazy loading and modularization. This is key for performance, especially as our app grows. Lazy loading ensures that we only load the code we need when we need it, reducing the initial load time and improving the user experience. Proper modularization helps us organize our code into logical units, making it easier to understand and maintain. Lastly, we're refactoring our services with modern dependency injection (providers, inject, etc.). This cleans up our code and makes it easier to test. Modern dependency injection is all about making our services more decoupled and testable. By using the inject function and the providers array, we can create a more flexible and maintainable architecture.

2. Building a Clean Architecture

Clean Architecture is the backbone of any maintainable application. When diving into Clean Architecture, our focus is on making our application super organized and easy to maintain. Think of it as decluttering your room but for code! This approach separates the app into distinct layers, each with its own responsibility, promoting flexibility and scalability. A clean architecture divides the application into layers such as presentation (UI), domain, infrastructure, and data, each with distinct responsibilities. The core idea behind Clean Architecture is separation of concerns, where each layer has a specific job and doesn't get tangled up with the others' tasks. This makes our app more adaptable to changes, easier to test, and a breeze to collaborate on. We'll be working to implement this layered approach, making sure everything has its place and interacts smoothly. First thing's first: we're separating our app into layers: the UI (that's the presentation layer), the domain (our business logic), infrastructure (the nuts and bolts), and data (where we store and retrieve info). This is like setting up different departments in a company – each has its own job and expertise.

Next, we're ditching those pesky circular dependencies. Nobody likes a code circle of doom! This is about making sure our modules don't depend on each other in a way that creates a loop, which can lead to chaos. By eliminating circular dependencies, we ensure that our modules can be developed, tested, and deployed independently. This makes our codebase more robust and easier to manage. Then, we're pulling that business logic out of components and into services or use cases. Components should be focused on displaying data and handling user interactions, not on complex calculations or business rules. Services and use cases are the perfect place for this logic, keeping our components lean and mean. This not only makes our components easier to understand and maintain, but also makes our business logic reusable across the application.

Finally, we're defining clear interfaces and contracts for how our layers talk to each other. This is like setting up a universal translator for our code. Well-defined interfaces ensure that our layers can communicate effectively without being tightly coupled. This is crucial for flexibility and allows us to make changes in one layer without affecting others. Clear contracts mean that each layer knows exactly what to expect from the others, reducing the chance of misunderstandings and making our application more resilient. By implementing these strategies, we're setting the stage for a well-structured, maintainable, and scalable application.

3. Achieving 90% Unit Test Coverage

Unit tests are our safety net. Unit test coverage is paramount in ensuring the reliability and robustness of our applications. Achieving a high level of coverage means that a significant portion of our code is being tested, reducing the risk of bugs and regressions. Aiming for 90% coverage is an ambitious but achievable goal that will give us confidence in the quality of our codebase. It's like having a personal QA team that constantly checks our work. So, let's roll up our sleeves and get testing! First up, we're reviewing and completing unit tests for components, services, and pipes. No code gets left behind! This is about making sure that every piece of our application is thoroughly tested, from the smallest utility function to the most complex component.

Then, we're making sure our mocks and stubs are on point for external dependencies. This is about isolating our units of code and testing them in a controlled environment. Mocks and stubs allow us to simulate the behavior of external systems, such as APIs or databases, without actually interacting with them. This ensures that our tests are fast, reliable, and not dependent on external factors. We'll be setting up these stand-ins so we can test our code in isolation. We'll be rocking tools like Jest or an improved TestBed, depending on our stack. These tools give us the power to write effective tests and get clear feedback on our code's behavior.

Next, we're configuring coverage reports and a badge in the README. This is about making our test results visible and tracking our progress over time. Coverage reports provide a detailed breakdown of which parts of our code are covered by tests, while the badge in the README serves as a quick visual indicator of our current coverage level. This visibility helps us stay motivated and ensures that we're consistently working towards our goal. This is like showing off our homework – in a good way! And finally, we're automating coverage verification in our CI (Continuous Integration) pipeline. This is our final safeguard. By integrating coverage checks into our CI process, we ensure that no code gets merged without meeting our minimum coverage threshold of 90%. This prevents regressions and ensures that our codebase remains healthy and reliable over time.

Additional Recommendations

But wait, there's more! To truly level up our project, we're also going to:

• Add linting and formatting rules (ESLint, Prettier) to keep our code consistent and readable. Think of it as a code style guide that everyone follows. Tools like ESLint and Prettier automatically enforce these rules, ensuring that our code is not only functional but also easy to read and understand.
• Maintain technical and architectural documentation in the repository. This is like writing a manual for our app, making it easier for others (and our future selves) to understand how it works. Comprehensive documentation is essential for onboarding new team members and for maintaining the application over time.
• Update package.json scripts for common tasks (test, lint, build, coverage). This streamlines our workflow and makes it easier to run common tasks with a single command. By defining these scripts, we can automate many of the repetitive tasks involved in development, such as running tests, linting code, and building the application.

Acceptance Criteria

So, how do we know we've nailed it? Here's the checklist:

• Our project is updated to Angular 20, sporting a clean, modular architecture. This means we're using the latest features of Angular 20 and our code is well-organized and easy to navigate.
• We've hit that 90% unit test coverage goal. Our tests are comprehensive and cover a significant portion of our codebase, giving us confidence in the quality of our application.
• Our architecture and testing documentation is up-to-date. This ensures that our team has a clear understanding of the application's structure and how to maintain it.
• Our CI/CD workflows are validating linting, builds, and coverage. This is our safety net, ensuring that every code change meets our quality standards before it's merged.

This might sound like a lot, but we can totally break this down into smaller tasks to make it easier to tackle. Let's get this project rocking!