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Running the Angular Application

Before we dive deep into running an Angular application, let's take a moment to understand what Angular is. Angular is a robust, open-source JavaScript framework developed and maintained by Google. It's primarily used for developing single-page web applications (SPA). It helps to extend HTML into a more expressive and readable format and also provides an environment to build a dynamic, fast, and efficient web application.

Now, let's discuss how you can run an Angular application. To do this, you'll need to follow a few steps:

Step 1: Installing Node.js and npm​

Angular requires Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager) to work. If you haven't installed them yet, you should do it now. Visit the official Node.js website and download the installer. npm comes with Node.js, so you don't need to install it separately. To verify the installation, open your terminal or command prompt and type:

node -v
npm -v

You should see the installed versions of Node.js and npm.

Step 2: Installing Angular CLI​

The next step is to install Angular CLI (Command Line Interface), which is a command-line tool for initializing, developing, and maintaining Angular applications. You can install it globally on your machine using npm:

npm install -g @angular/cli

To verify the installation, run:

ng --version

Step 3: Creating a New Angular Application​

Once Angular CLI is installed, you can create a new Angular application by running the following command:

ng new my-app

Replace 'my-app' with your desired application name. The CLI will ask you a few questions about the setup. For most cases, the default settings are sufficient.

Step 4: Running the Angular Application​

Finally, navigate into your new application's directory and start the server:

cd my-app
ng serve

By default, the application will run on http://localhost:4200/. Open this address in your web browser, and you should see your Angular application running.

Step 5: Building the Angular Application​

After you have made all the changes and tested your application, you can build it for production using the following command:

ng build --prod

This command will create a dist/ directory in your project's root, which contains the build artifacts and is ready to be deployed on any static file server.

That's it! You've now learned how to run an Angular application. It may seem like a lot of steps, but once you get the hang of it, creating and running Angular applications will become second nature. Happy coding!