jQuery Vs AngularJS – A Good Comparison

In this Web Development Tutorial, I’ll try to answer two very common questions related to jQuery and AngularJS, i.e., What is the difference between jQuery and AngularJS? or jQuery Vs AngularJS?

Instead of just explaining the difference and listing features of both technologies, I further tried to provide answers for more related questions as well as concepts. For example:

• When to use jQuery or AngularJS?
• How to avoid common mistake of using AngularJS in jQuery Fashion?
• Developer’s perspective – Code Comparison
• Can we use jQuery inside or with AngularJS?

jQuery

jQuery is a lightweight and feature-rich JavaScript Library that helps web developers by simplifying the usage of client-side scripting for web applications using JavaScript. It extensively simplifies using JavaScript on a website and it’s lightweight as well as fast.

So, using jQuery, we can:

• easily manipulate the contents of a webpage
• apply styles to make UI more attractive
• easy DOM traversal
• effects and animation
• simple to make AJAX calls and
• utilities and much more… etc.

As mentioned earlier, jQuery is a JavaScript library, so we can use this library in our application partially/fully to fulfill a single or many of the features it provides (as listed above). For example, we can simply use jQuery library in our application to give some effects and animations or simply making AJAX-based calls or using all of the above listed features. It’s just like a plugin.

AngularJS

AngularJS is a product by none other the Search Engine Giant Google and it’s an open source MVC-based framework (considered to be the best and only next generation framework). AngularJS is a great tool for building highly rich client-side web applications.

As being a framework, it dictates us to follow some rules and a structured approach. It’s not just a JavaScript library but a framework that is perfectly designed (framework tools are designed to work together in a truly interconnected way).

In comparison of features jQuery Vs AngularJS, AngularJS simply offers more features:

• Two-Way data binding
• REST friendly
• MVC-based Pattern
• Deep Linking
• Template
• Form Validation
• Dependency Injection
• Localization
• Full Testing Environment
• Server Communication

Note: In order to get more detailed information about MVC, please follow here.

When to Use jQuery or AngularJS?

Most of the time, people fail to comprehend the real value of these technologies during application development. AngularJS is best suited for the web application development as it works on the HTML code and JSON data which helps in developing for interactive and robust applications but using the same for a simple website development results in slow loading and quite erratic websites.

While jQuery is a fast and feature-rich language which has a a commendable JavaScript library and a great tool for creating feature-rich websites. It has in-built features such as HTML document traversal, event handling, manipulation, animation and Ajax support and others which make it easier and simpler to develop hardcore websites. Therefore before utilizing any of these highly intuitive and robust languages, it is necessary to frame a sound approach dedicated either to develop an advanced web application or website development.

Don’t Use AngularJS in jQuery Fashion

jquery enjoys a huge presence of plugins which makes it easier for the developer to plug these in the websites and let it do the remaining job. On the other hand, AngularJS possesses a completely different structure which makes it harder to find any plugins or to create one which can be simply placed on the website and left for good. AngularJS has jqLite which possess the jQuery functionalities and it can be used for developing different plugins as per the need of websites but stay away for developing or patching codes of old plugins and embedding it on the website.

Code Comparison

For a developer perspective, the code comparison is as follows:

Can We Use jQuery Inside Or With AngularJS?

In certain scenarios, we may want our AngularJS application to use jQuery library. Now, AngularJS can use jQuery in our application when the application is being bootstrapped. Otherwise, Angular will use its own implementation of the subset of jQuery that we discussed above jqLite.

Final Thoughts

While taking a view AngularJS Vs jQuery, it should be understood that one doesn’t neither-neither replaces other nor does it compete with each other. The real comparison of AngularJS with similar technologies including ReactJS, KnockoutJS, BackboneJS and Ember can be found here. JQuery is best suited for DOM manipulation while AngularJS is suited for web application development. So when you are looking to develop robust applications, then opt for AngularJS and in order to add more functionality and to perform DOM manipulation on the website, then stick with jQuery.

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