Using Angular in Visual Studio Code
Angular is a popular web development platform developed and maintained by Google. Angular
uses TypeScript as its main programming language. The Visual Studio Code editor supports
TypeScript IntelliSense and code navigation out of the box, so you can do Angular development
without installing any other extension.
Note: To help get you started with Angular development, you can use the Angular profile
template that includes useful extensions, settings, and code snippets.
Welcome to Angular
We'll be using the Angular CLI for this tutorial. To install and use the command line interface as well
as run the Angular application server, you'll need the [Link] JavaScript runtime and npm (the
[Link] package manager) installed. npm is included with [Link] which you can install
from [Link] downloads.
Tip: To test that you have [Link] and npm correctly installed on your machine, you can type node -
-version and npm --version.
To install the Angular CLI, in a terminal or command prompt type:
npm install -g @angular/cli
This may take a few minutes to install. You can now create a new Angular application by typing:
ng new my-app
my-app is the name of the folder for your application. The ng new command prompts you with
options for the generated application. Accept the defaults by pressing the Enter key. This may take a
few minutes to create the Angular application in TypeScript and install its dependencies.
Let's quickly run our Angular application by navigating to the new folder and typing ng serve to start
the web server and open the application in a browser:
cd my-app
ng serve
You should see "Welcome to app!!" on [Link] in your browser. We'll leave the web
server running while we look at the application with VS Code.
To open your Angular application in VS Code, open another terminal (or command prompt) and
navigate to the my-app folder and type code .:
cd my-app
code .
Syntax highlighting and bracket matching
Now expand the src\app folder and select the [Link] file. You'll notice that VS Code has
syntax highlighting for the various source code elements and, if you put the cursor on a parenthesis,
the matching bracket is also selected.
IntelliSense
As you hover your mouse over text in the file, you'll see that VS Code gives you information about
key items in your source code. Items such as variables, classes and Angular decorators are a few
examples where you'll be presented with this information.
As you start typing in [Link], you'll see smart suggestions and code snippets.
You can click the information button (i) to see a flyout with more documentation.
VS Code uses the TypeScript language service for code intelligence (IntelliSense) and it has a
feature called Automatic Type Acquisition (ATA). ATA pulls down the npm Type Declaration files
(*.[Link]) for the npm modules referenced in the [Link].
Go to Definition, Peek definition
Through the TypeScript language service, VS Code can also provide type definition information in
the editor through Go to Definition (F12) or Peek Definition (Alt+F12). Open the [Link] file
and put the cursor over AppComponent in the bootstrap property declaration, right click and
select Peek Definition. A Peek window will open showing the AppComponent definition
from [Link].
Press Escape to close the Peek window.
Hello World
Let's update the sample application to "Hello World". Go back to the [Link] file and
change the title string in AppComponent to "Hello World".
import { Component } from '@angular/core';
@Component({
selector: 'app-root',
templateUrl: './[Link]',
styleUrls: ['./[Link]']
})
export class AppComponent {
title = 'Hello World';
Once you save the [Link] file, the running instance of the server will update the web
page and you'll see "Welcome to Hello World!!".
Tip: VS Code supports Auto Save, which by default saves your files after a delay. Check the Auto
Save option in the File menu to turn on Auto Save or directly configure
the [Link] user setting.
Debugging Angular
To debug the client side Angular code, we'll use the built-in JavaScript debugger.
Note: This tutorial assumes you have the Edge browser installed. If you want to debug using
Chrome, replace the launch type with chrome. There is also a debugger for the Firefox browser.
Set a breakpoint
To set a breakpoint in [Link], click on the gutter to the left of the line numbers. This will
set a breakpoint which will be visible as a red circle.
Configure the debugger
We need to initially configure the debugger. To do so, go to the Run and Debug view (Ctrl+Shift+D)
and select the create a [Link] file link to create a [Link] debugger configuration file.
Choose Web App (Edge) from the Select debugger dropdown list. This will create a [Link] file
in a new .vscode folder in your project which includes a configuration to launch the website.
We need to make one change for our example: change the port of the url from 8080 to 4200.
Your [Link] should look like this:
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
"type": "msedge",
"request": "launch",
"name": "Launch Edge against localhost",
"url": "[Link]
"webRoot": "${workspaceFolder}"
Press F5 or the green arrow to launch the debugger and open a new browser instance. The source
code where the breakpoint is set runs on startup before the debugger was attached so we won't hit
the breakpoint until we refresh the web page. Refresh the page and you should hit your breakpoint.
You can step through your source code (F10), inspect variables such as AppComponent, and see
the call stack of the client side Angular application.
For more information about the debugger and its available options, check out our documentation
on browser debugging.
Angular profile template
Profiles let you quickly switch your extensions, settings, and UI layout depending on your current
project or task. To help you get started with Angular development, you can use the Angular profile
template, which is a curated profile with useful extensions and settings. You can use the profile
template as is or use it as a starting point to customize further for you own workflows.
You select a profile template through the Profiles > Create Profile... dropdown:
Once you select a profile template, you can review the settings and extensions, and remove
individual items if you don't want to include them in your new profile. After creating the new profile
based on the template, changes made to settings, extensions, or UI are persisted in your profile.
Popular Starter Kits
In this tutorial, we used the Angular CLI to create a simple Angular application. There are lots of
great samples and starter kits available to help build your first Angular application.
Recipes
The VS Code team has created recipes for more complex debugging scenarios. There you'll find
the Debugging with Angular CLI recipe which also uses the Angular CLI and goes into detail on
debugging the generated project's unit tests.
MEAN Starter
If you'd like to see a full MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, [Link]) stack example, look
at [Link]. They have documentation and an application generator for a sample MEAN project.
You'll need to install and start MongoDB, but you'll quickly have a MEAN application running. VS
Code also has great MongoDB support through the Azure Databases extension.
React
React is a library for building user interfaces and it is more minimal than angular. If you'd like to see
an example of React working with VS Code, check out the Using React in VS Code tutorial. It will
walk you through creating an React application and configuring the [Link] file for the
JavaScript debugger.
Angular Extensions
In addition to the features VS Code provides out of the box, you can install VS Code extensions for
greater functionality.
(This article is sourced from: [Link] and the
content of the article is here in case of link breakage.)