Chapter 2: Building an SPA Application with Scully and Angular Router
Angular applications follow the Single Page Application (SPA) architecture, where different views of the web page can be activated according to the browser URL. Any changes to that URL can be intercepted by the Angular router and translated to routes that can activate a particular Angular component.
Scully is a popular static website generator that is based on the Jamstack architecture. It can cooperate nicely with the Angular router to prerender the content of an Angular application according to each route.
In this chapter, we are going to combine Angular and Scully to create a personal blog. The following topics are going to be covered:
- Setting up routing in an Angular application
- Creating the basic layout of our blog
- Configuring routing for our application
- Adding blog capabilities with Scully
- Displaying blog posts on the home page
Essential background theory and context
In the old days of web development, client-side applications were highly coupled with the underlying server infrastructure. Much machinery was involved when we wanted to visit the page of a website using a URL. The browser would send the requested URL to the server, and the server should respond with a matching HTML file for that URL. This was a complicated process that would result in delays and varying round-trip times.
Modern web applications eliminate these problems using the SPA architecture. A client needs to request a single HTML file only once from the server. Any subsequent changes to the URL of the browser are handled internally from the client infrastructure. In Angular, the router is responsible for intercepting in-app URL requests and handling them according to a defined route configuration.
Jamstack is a hot, emerging technology that allows us to create fast and secure web applications. It can be used for any application type, ranging from an e-commerce website to a Software as a Service (SaaS) web application or even a personal blog. The architecture of Jamstack is based on the following pillars:
- Performance: Pages are generated and prerendered during production, eliminating the need to wait for content to load.
- Scaling: Content is static files that can be served from anywhere, even from a Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider that improves the performance of the application.
- Security: The serverless nature of server-side processes and the fact that content is already static eliminates potential attacks that target server infrastructures.
Scully is the first static website generator for Angular that embraces the Jamstack approach. It essentially generates pages of the Angular application during build time to be immediately available when requested.
Project overview
In this project, we will build a personal blog using the Angular framework and enhance it with Jamstack characteristics using the Scully site generator. Initially, we will scaffold a new Angular application and enable it for routing. We will then create the basic layout of our application by adding some barebone components. As soon as we have a working Angular application, we will add blog support to it using Scully. We will then create some blog posts using Markdown files and display them on the home page of our application.
Build time: 1 hour.
Getting started
The following software tools are required to complete this project:
- Angular CLI: A command-line interface for Angular that you can find at https://angular.io/cli
- GitHub material: The related code for this chapter, which you can find in the
Chapter02
folder at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Angular-Projects-Second-Edition.
Setting up routing in an Angular application
We will kick off our project by creating a new Angular application from scratch. Execute the following command of the Angular CLI in a terminal window to create a new Angular application:
ng new my-blog --routing --style=scss
We use the ng new
command to create a new Angular application, passing the following options:
my-blog
: The name of the Angular application that we want to create. The Angular CLI will create amy-blog
folder in the path where we execute the command.Important Note
Every command that we run in the terminal window should be run inside this folder.
--routing
: Enables routing in the Angular application.--style=scss
: Configures the Angular application to use the SCSS stylesheet format when working with CSS styles.
When we enable routing in an Angular application, the Angular CLI imports several artifacts from the @angular/router
npm package in our application:
- It creates the
app-routing.module.ts
file, which is the main routing module of our application:import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { RouterModule, Routes } from '@angular/router'; const routes: Routes = []; @NgModule({ imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)], exports: [RouterModule] }) export class AppRoutingModule { }
- It imports
AppRoutingModule
into the main module of our application,app.module.ts
:import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser'; import { AppRoutingModule } from './app-routing.module'; import { AppComponent } from './app.component'; @NgModule({ declarations: [ AppComponent ], imports: [ BrowserModule, AppRoutingModule ], providers: [], bootstrap: [AppComponent] }) export class AppModule { }
We configured our application to use the SCSS stylesheet format. Instead of creating the styles of our application manually, we will use the Bootstrap CSS library:
- Execute the following command in a terminal window to install Bootstrap:
npm install bootstrap
We use the
npm
executable to install thebootstrap
package from the npm registry in the previous command. - Add the following
import
statement at the top of thestyles.scss
file that exists in thesrc
folder of our Angular application:@import "~bootstrap/scss/bootstrap";
The
styles.scss
file contains CSS styles that are applied globally in our application. In the previous snippet, we import all the styles from the Bootstrap library into our application. The@import
CSS rule accepts the absolute path of thebootstrap.scss
file as an option, without adding the.scss
extension. The~
character represents thenode_modules
folder of our Angular application.Important Note
The
node_modules
folder contains all the npm packages and libraries that our application needs, either during development or runtime.
In the following section, we will learn how to create the basic layout of our blog by creating components, such as the header and the footer.
Creating the basic layout of our blog
A blog typically has a header containing all the primary website links and a footer containing copyright information and other useful links. In the world of Angular, both can be represented as separate components.
The header component is used only once since it is added when our application starts up, and it is always rendered as the main menu of the website. In Angular, we typically create a module, named core by convention, to keep such components or services central to our application. To create the module, we use the generate
command of the Angular CLI:
ng generate module core
The preceding command will create the module in the src\app\core
folder of our application. To create the header component, we will use the same command, passing a different set of options:
ng generate component header --path=src/app/core --module=core --export
The previous command will create all necessary component files inside the src\app\core\header
folder:

Figure 2.1 – Header component
It will also declare HeaderComponent
in the core
module and add it to its exports
property so that other modules can use it:
core.module.ts
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { CommonModule } from '@angular/common'; import { HeaderComponent } from './header/header.component'; @NgModule({ declarations: [ HeaderComponent ], imports: [ CommonModule ], exports: [ HeaderComponent ] }) export class CoreModule { }
The header component should display the main links of our blog. Open the header.component.html
template file of the header component and replace its content with the following snippet:
header.component.html
<nav class="navbar navbar-expand navbar-light bg-light"> <div class="container-fluid"> <a class="navbar-brand">Angular Projects</a> <ul class="navbar-nav me-auto"> <li class="nav-item"> <a class="nav-link">Articles</a> </li> <li class="nav-item"> <a class="nav-link">Contact</a> </li> </ul> </div> </nav>
The footer component can be used more than once in an Angular application. Currently, we want to display it on the main page of our application. In the future, we may want to have it also on a login page that will be available for blog visitors. In such a case, the footer component should be reusable. When we want to group components that will be reused throughout our application, we typically create a module named shared by convention. Use the Angular CLI generate
command to create the shared
module:
ng generate module shared
The previous command will create the shared
module in the src\app\shared
folder. The footer component can now be created using the following command:
ng generate component footer --path=src/app/shared --module=shared --export
The previous command will create all necessary files of the footer component inside the src\app\shared\footer
folder. It will also add FooterComponent
in the declarations
and exports
properties of the shared
module:
shared.module.ts
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { CommonModule } from '@angular/common'; import { FooterComponent } from './footer/footer.component'; @NgModule({ declarations: [ FooterComponent ], imports: [ CommonModule ], exports: [ FooterComponent ] }) export class SharedModule { }
The content of the footer component should contain copyright information about our blog. Let's see how to add this information to our component:
- Open the
footer.component.ts
TypeScript class file of the footer component. Add acurrentDate
property in theFooterComponent
class and initialize it to a newDate
object:export class FooterComponent implements OnInit { currentDate = new Date(); constructor() { } ngOnInit(): void { } }
- Open the
footer.component.html
template file of the footer component and replace its content with the following:<nav class="navbar fixed-bottom navbar-light bg-light"> <div class="container-fluid"> <p>Copyright @{{currentDate | date: 'y'}}. All Rights Reserved</p> </div> </nav>
The preceding code uses interpolation to display the value of the
currentDate
property on the screen. It also uses the built-indate
pipe to display only the year of the current date.Important Note
Pipes are a built-in feature of the Angular framework that apply transformations on the view representation of a component property. The underlying value of the property remains intact.
We have already created the essential components of our blog. Now it is time to display them on the screen:
- Open the main module of the application, the
app.module.ts
file, and addCoreModule
andSharedModule
into theimports
property of the@NgModule
decorator:@NgModule({ declarations: [ AppComponent ], imports: [ BrowserModule, AppRoutingModule, CoreModule, SharedModule ], providers: [], bootstrap: [AppComponent] })
- Add the appropriate
import
statements at the top of the file for each module:import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser'; import { AppRoutingModule } from './app-routing.module'; import { AppComponent } from './app.component'; import { CoreModule } from './core/core.module'; import { SharedModule } from './shared/shared.module';
- Open the
app.component.html
template file of the main component and replace its content with the following HTML snippet:<app-header></app-header> <app-footer></app-footer>
We added the header and the footer component in the preceding snippet by using their CSS selectors.
If we run the serve
command of the Angular CLI to preview the application, we should get the following:

Figure 2.2 – Basic layout
We have already completed the basic layout of our blog application, and it looks great! But the header contains two additional links that we have not covered yet. We will learn how to use routing for activating those links in the following section.
Configuring routing for our application
The header component that we created in the previous section contains two links:
- Articles: Displays a list of blog articles
- Contact: Displays personal information about the blog owner
The previous links will also become the main features of our application. So, we need to create an Angular module for each one.
Tip
When you design your website and need to decide upon the Angular modules that you will use, check out the main menu of the website. Each link of the menu should be a different feature and, thus, a different Angular module.
By convention, Angular modules that contain functionality for a specific feature are called feature modules.
Creating the contact page
Let's begin by creating our contact feature first:
- Create a module that will be the home for our contact feature:
ng generate module contact
- Create a component that will be the main component of the contact module:
ng generate component contact --path=src/app/contact --module=contact --export --flat
We pass the
--flat
option to thegenerate
command so that the Angular CLI will not create a separate folder for our component, as in previous cases. The contact component will be the only component in our module, so there is no point in having it separately. - Open the
contact.component.html
file and add the following HTML content:<div class="card mx-auto text-center border-light" style="width: 18rem;"> <img src="assets/angular.png" class="card-img-top" alt="Angular logo"> <div class="card-body"> <h5 class="card-title">Angular Projects</h5> <p class="card-text"> A personal blog created with the Angular framework and the Scully static site generator </p> <a href="https://angular.io/" target="_blank" class="card-link">Angular</a> <a href="https://scully.io/" target="_blank" class="card-link">Scully</a> </div> </div>
In the preceding code, we used the
angular.png
image, which you can find in thesrc\assets
folder of the project from the accompanying GitHub repository.Tip
The
assets
folder in an Angular CLI project is used for static content such as images, fonts, or JSON files.
We have already created our contact feature. The next step is to add it to the main page of our Angular application:
- Open the
app-routing.module.ts
file and add a new route configuration object in theroutes
property:import { ContactComponent } from './contact/contact.component'; const routes: Routes = [ { path: 'contact', component: ContactComponent } ];
The preceding code indicates that when the URL of the browser points to the
contact
path, our application will activate and displayContactComponent
on the screen. Theroutes
property of a routing module contains the routing configuration of the respective feature module. It is an array of route configuration objects where each one defines the component class and the URL path that activates it. - Add
ContactModule
in theimports
array of the@NgModule
decorator ofAppModule
to be able to use it:@NgModule({ declarations: [ AppComponent ], imports: [ BrowserModule, AppRoutingModule, CoreModule, SharedModule, ContactModule ], providers: [], bootstrap: [AppComponent] })
Do not forget to add the respective
import
statement forContactModule
at the top of the file. - Routed components, just like
ContactComponent
, need a place where they can be loaded. Open theapp.component.html
file and add therouter-outlet
directive:<app-header></app-header> <div class="container"> <router-outlet></router-outlet> </div> <app-footer></app-footer>
Now, we need to wire up the route configuration that we created with the actual link on the header component:
- Open the
header.component.html
file and add therouterLink
directive to the respective anchor HTML element:<li class="nav-item"> <a routerLink="/contact" routerLinkActive="active" class="nav-link">Contact</a> </li>
In the preceding snippet, the
routerLink
directive points to thepath
property of the route configuration object. We have also added therouterLinkActive
directive, which sets theactive
class on the anchor element when the specific route is activated.Important Note
Notice that the value of the
routerLink
directive contains a leading/
, whereas thepath
property of the route configuration object that we defined does not. According to the case, omitting the/
would give a different meaning to the route. - The
routerLink
androuterLinkActive
directives are part of the Angular router package. We need to importRouterModule
in the core module to use them:import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { CommonModule } from '@angular/common'; import { HeaderComponent } from './header/header.component'; import { RouterModule } from '@angular/router'; @NgModule({ declarations: [ HeaderComponent ], imports: [ CommonModule, RouterModule ], exports: [ HeaderComponent ] }) export class CoreModule { }
We are now ready to preview our new contact page! If we run the application using ng serve
and click on the Contact link, we should see the following output:

Figure 2.3 – Contact page
In the following section, we will build the functionality for the Articles link of the header in our blog.
Adding the articles page
The feature that is responsible for displaying articles in our blog will be the articles module. It will also be the module that connects the dots between Angular and Scully. We will use the generate
command of the Angular CLI to create that module:
ng generate module articles --route=articles --module=app-routing
In the previous command, we pass some additional routing options:
--route
: Defines the URL path of our feature--module
: Indicates the routing module that will define the route configuration object that activates our feature
The Angular CLI performs additional actions, instead of just creating the module, upon executing the command:
- It creates a routed component in the
src\app\articles
folder that will be activated by default from a route navigation object. It is the landing page of our feature, and it will display a list of blog posts, as we will see in the Displaying blog data on the home page section. - It creates a routing module, named
articles-routing.module.ts
, that contains the routing configuration of the articles module. - It adds a new route configuration object in the route configuration of the main application module that activates the articles module.
The articles-routing.module.ts
file contains the routing configuration for the articles module:
articles-routing.module.ts
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { RouterModule, Routes } from '@angular/router'; import { ArticlesComponent } from './articles.component'; const routes: Routes = [{ path: '', component: ArticlesComponent }]; @NgModule({ imports: [RouterModule.forChild(routes)], exports: [RouterModule] }) export class ArticlesRoutingModule { }
It imports RouterModule
using the forChild
method to pass the routing configuration to the Angular router. If we take a look at the main routing module of the application, we will see that it follows a slightly different approach:
app-routing.module.ts
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { RouterModule, Routes } from '@angular/router'; import { ContactComponent } from './contact/contact.component'; const routes: Routes = [ { path: 'contact', component: ContactComponent }, { path: 'articles', loadChildren: () => import('./articles/articles.module').then(m => m.ArticlesModule) } ]; @NgModule({ imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)], exports: [RouterModule] }) export class AppRoutingModule { }
The forChild
method is used in feature modules, whereas the forRoot
method should be used only in the main application module.
The route configuration of the articles module contains only one route that activates ArticlesComponent
. The path of the route is set to an empty string to indicate that it is the default route of the routing module. It essentially means that ArticlesComponent
will be activated whenever that module is loaded. But how is the articles module loaded in our application?
The second route of the main routing module contains a route configuration object that does not activate a component but rather a module. It uses the loadChildren
method to load ArticlesModule
dynamically when navigation triggers the articles
path.
Important Note
The import
function in the loadChildren
property accepts the relative path of the TypeScript module file without the extension.
The previous approach is called lazy loading and improves the startup and the overall performance of an Angular application. It creates a separate bundle for each lazy-loaded module, which is loaded upon request, reducing the final bundle size and the memory consumption of your application. Let's wire up the new route to our header component:
- Open the
header.component.html
file and add the followingrouterLink
androuterLinkActive
directives to theArticles
anchor HTML element:<li class="nav-item"> <a routerLink="/articles" routerLinkActive="active" class="nav-link">Articles</a> </li>
- Run
ng serve
and use your favorite browser to preview your application. - Open the developer tools of your browser, click on the Articles link and inspect the Network tab:

Figure 2.4 – Lazy loading Angular module
Among other requests, you should see one named articles-articles-module.js. It is the bundle of the lazy-loaded articles module that was loaded when you clicked on the Articles link.
We are now ready to convert our amazing Angular application into a professional blog website. Before we move on, let's add some additional routes to the app-routing.module.ts
file:
const routes: Routes = [ { path: 'contact', component: ContactComponent }, { path: 'articles', loadChildren: () => import('./articles/articles.module').then(m => m.ArticlesModule) }, { path: '', pathMatch: 'full', redirectTo: 'articles' }, { path: '**', redirectTo: 'articles' } ];
We added a default route to automatically redirect our blog users to the articles
path upon visiting the blog. Additionally, we created a new route configuration object with its path set to **
that also navigates to the articles
path. The **
syntax is called the wildcard route, and it is triggered when the router cannot match a requested URL with a defined route.
Tip
Define the most specific routes first and then add any generic ones such as the default and the wildcard routes. The Angular router parses the route configuration in the order that we define and follows a first match wins strategy to select one.
We have already enabled and configured routing in our Angular application. In the following section, we will establish the infrastructure needed to add blogging capabilities to our application.
Adding blog capabilities with Scully
Our application currently does not have any specific logic regarding blog posts. It is a typical Angular application that uses routing. However, by adding a routing configuration, we have established the foundation for adding blog support using Scully.
Important Note
Scully needs at least one route defined in an Angular application to work correctly.
First, we need to install Scully in our application.
Installing the Scully library
We will use the add
command of the Angular CLI to install Scully in our Angular application:
ng add @scullyio/init
The preceding command downloads and installs all the necessary npm packages for Scully to work correctly in our Angular application. It also modifies the structure of the Angular project to accommodate its specific needs.
It imports ScullyLibModule
in our main application module:
app.module.ts
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core'; import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser'; import { AppRoutingModule } from './app-routing.module'; import { AppComponent } from './app.component'; import { ContactModule } from './contact/contact.module'; import { CoreModule } from './core/core.module'; import { SharedModule } from './shared/shared.module'; import { ScullyLibModule } from '@scullyio/ng-lib'; @NgModule({ declarations: [ AppComponent ], imports: [ BrowserModule, AppRoutingModule, CoreModule, SharedModule, ContactModule, ScullyLibModule ], providers: [], bootstrap: [AppComponent] }) export class AppModule { }
ScullyLibModule
is the main module of the Scully library that contains various Angular services and directives that Scully will need.
It also creates a configuration file for the Scully library in the root folder of the Angular CLI workspace:
scully.my-blog.config.ts
import { ScullyConfig } from '@scullyio/scully'; export const config: ScullyConfig = { projectRoot: "./src", projectName: "my-blog", outDir: './dist/static', routes: { } };
The configuration file contains information about our Angular application that Scully will need along the way:
projectRoot
: The path containing the source code of the Angular applicationprojectName
: The name of the Angular applicationoutDir
: The output path of the Scully generated filesImportant Note
The Scully output path must be different from the path that the Angular CLI outputs the bundle of your Angular application. The latter can be configured from the
angular.json
file.routes
: It contains the route configuration that will be used for accessing our blog posts. Scully will populate it automatically, as we will see in the following section.
Since we have installed Scully successfully in our Angular application, we can now configure it to initialize our blog.
Initializing our blog page
Scully provides a specific Angular CLI schematic for initializing an Angular application, such as a blog, by using Markdown (.md
) files:
ng generate @scullyio/init:markdown
The previous command will start the configuration process of our blog by going through a list of questions (default values are shown inside parentheses):
- Type
posts
as the name of the blog module:Figure 2.5 – Blog module name
This will create a new Angular module named posts.
- Leave the slug choice empty, and press Enter to accept the default value:
Figure 2.6 – Markdown slug
The slug is a unique identifier for each post, and it is defined in the route configuration object of the module.
- Enter
mdfiles
as the path that Scully will use to store our actual blog post files:Figure 2.7 – Markdown files path
This will create an
mdfiles
folder inside the root path of our Angular CLI project. By default, it will also create a blog post for our convenience. We will learn how to create our own in the Displaying blog data on the home page section. - Type
posts
as the name of the route for accessing our blog posts:

Figure 2.8 – Blog route name
The name of the route is the path
property of the route configuration object that will be created.
Scully performs various actions upon executing the preceding commands, including the creation of the routing configuration of the posts module:
posts-routing.module.ts
import {NgModule} from '@angular/core'; import {Routes, RouterModule} from '@angular/router'; import {PostsComponent} from './posts.component'; const routes: Routes = [ { path: ':id', component: PostsComponent, }, { path: '**', component: PostsComponent, } ]; @NgModule({ imports: [RouterModule.forChild(routes)], exports: [RouterModule], }) export class PostsRoutingModule {}
path
for the first route is set to :id
and activates PostsComponent
. The colon character indicates that id
is a route parameter. The id
parameter is related to the slug property defined earlier in the Scully configuration. Scully works by creating one route for each blog post that we create. It uses the route configuration of the posts module and the main application module to construct the routes
property in the Scully configuration file:
routes: { '/posts/:id': { type: 'contentFolder', id: { folder: "./mdfiles" } }, }
PostsComponent
is the Angular component that is used to render the details of each blog post. The template file of the component can be further customized according to your needs:
posts.component.html
<h3>ScullyIo content</h3> <hr> <!-- This is where Scully will inject the static HTML --> <scully-content></scully-content> <hr> <h4>End of content</h4>
You can customize all content in the previous template file except the <scully-content></scully-content>
line, which is used internally by Scully.
At this point, we have completed the installation and configuration of Scully in our Angular application. It is now time for the final part of the project! In the next section, we will put Angular and Scully to cooperate and display blog posts in our Angular application.
Displaying blog posts on the home page
We would like our users to see the list of available blog posts as soon as they land on our blog website. According to the default route path that we have defined, ArticlesComponent
is the landing page of our blog. Scully provides ScullyRoutesService
, an Angular service that we can use in our components to get information about the routes that it will create according to the blog posts. Let's put this service in action on our landing page:
- Navigate to the
articles.component.ts
TypeScript class file. - Import
ScullyRoute
andScullyRoutesService
from the@scullyio/ng-lib
package:import { ScullyRoute, ScullyRoutesService } from '@scullyio/ng-lib';
- Inject
ScullyRoutesService
in the constructor of theArticlesComponent
class:constructor(private scullyService: ScullyRoutesService) { }
- Create a component property of
ScullyRoute
array type:posts: ScullyRoute[] = [];
- Edit the
ngOnInit
method of the component and add the following code:ngOnInit(): void { this.scullyService.available$.subscribe(posts => { this.posts = posts.filter(post => post.title); }); }
- Open the
articles.component.html
file and add the following HTML code:<div class="list-group mt-3"> <a *ngFor="let post of posts" [routerLink]="post.route" class="list-group-item list-group-item-action"> <div class="d-flex w-100 justify-content-between"> <h5 class="mb-1">{{post.title}}</h5> </div> <p class="mb-1">{{post.description}}</p> </a> </div>
There are many Angular techniques involved in the previous steps, so let's break them down piece by piece.
When we want to use an Angular service in a component, we just need to ask for it from the Angular framework. How? By adding it as a property in the constructor of the component. The component does not need to know anything about how the service is implemented.
The ngOnInit
method is part of the OnInit
interface, which is implemented by our component. It is called by the Angular framework when a component is initialized and provides us with a hook to add custom logic to be executed.
Tip
Angular services that provide initialization logic to a component should be called inside the ngOnInit
method and not in the constructor because it is easier to provide mocks about those services when unit testing the component.
The available$
property of ScullyRoutesService
is called an observable. To retrieve its value, we need to subscribe to it. The returned posts
variable will contain all the available routes that were generated from Scully. Scully is run against all routes of our Angular application. To avoid displaying routes other than those related to blog posts, such as the contact route, we filter out the results from the available$
property.
When we subscribe to an observable, we need to unsubscribe from it when our component no longer exists. Otherwise, we may experience memory leaks in our Angular application. Let's see how we can accomplish this task using another life cycle hook of the component called ngOnDestroy
:
- Declare a private
routeSub
property of theSubscription
type in theArticlesComponent
class.Subscription
can be imported from therxjs
npm package. - Set the returned value of the
available$
observable to therouteSub
property. - Add the
OnDestroy
interface to the list of implemented interfaces of the component.OnDestroy
can be imported from the@angular/core
npm package. It is executed when the component is destroyed, and it is not rendered on the screen anymore. - Implement the
ngOnDestroy
method and call theunsubscribe
method of therouteSub
property in the body of the method.
The resulting TypeScript file of the component should look like the following:
articles.component.ts
import { Component, OnInit, OnDestroy } from '@angular/core'; import { ScullyRoute, ScullyRoutesService } from '@scullyio/ng-lib'; import { Subscription } from 'rxjs'; @Component({ selector: 'app-articles', templateUrl: './articles.component.html', styleUrls: ['./articles.component.scss'] }) export class ArticlesComponent implements OnInit, OnDestroy { posts: ScullyRoute[] = []; private routeSub: Subscription | undefined; constructor(private scullyService: ScullyRoutesService) { } ngOnInit(): void { this.routeSub = this.scullyService.available$.subscribe(posts => { this.posts = posts.filter(post => post.title); }); } ngOnDestroy(): void { this.routeSub?.unsubscribe(); } }
In the template of our component, we use the *ngFor
Angular built-in directive to iterate over the posts
array inside HTML. We can then access each item of the array using the post
template reference variable and use interpolation to display title
and description
.
Finally, we add a routerLink
directive to each anchor element to navigate to the respective blog post when clicked. Notice that routerLink
is surrounded by []
. The []
syntax is called property binding, and we use it when we want to bind the property of an HTML element to a variable. In our case, we bind the routerLink
directive to the route
property of the post
template reference variable.
Now that we have finally completed all the pieces of the puzzle, we can see our blog website in action:
- Run the
build
command of the Angular CLI to build our Angular application:ng build
- Execute the following npm command to build Scully and generate our blog routes:
npm run scully
The preceding command will create a
scully-routes.json
file inside thesrc\assets
folder. It contains the routes of our Angular application and is needed from the Scully runtime.Tip
Running the Scully executable for the first time will prompt you to collect anonymous errors to improve its services.
- Run the following npm command to serve our blog:
npm run scully:serve
The preceding command will start two web servers: one that contains the static prerendered version of our website built using Scully and another that is the Angular live version of our application:

Figure 2.9 – Serving our application
If we open our browser and navigate to http://localhost:1668, we will not see any blog posts. Why is that?
A blog post created with Scully is not returned in the available$
property of ScullyRoutesService
unless we publish it. To publish a blog post, we do the following:
- Navigate to the
mdfiles
folder that Scully created and open the only.md
file that you will find. The name and contents may vary from your file because it is based on the creation date from Scully:--- title: 2020-11-15-posts description: 'blog description' published: false slugs: - ___UNPUBLISHED___khm71wkh_hIzSmrBDHceuWrDrqqTnY8qCwvurkxdT --- # 2020-11-15-posts
Scully has defined a set of properties between the closing and ending
---
lines at the top of the file representing metadata about the blog post. You can also add your own as key-value pairs. - Delete the
slugs
property and set thepublished
property totrue
:--- title: 2020-11-15-posts description: 'blog description' published: true --- # 2020-11-15-posts
Tip
If you do not want to publish a post manually, Scully supports the automatic publishing of blog posts. You can use the reserved
publishDate
property in the metadata to define the date you want to publish the blog post, and Scully will do the rest. - Run the following command to force Scully to regenerate the routes of our application:
npm run scully
We need to execute the previous command every time we make a change in our blog-related files.
- Execute the
npm run scully:serve
command and navigate to preview the generated website.
We can now see one blog post, the default one that was created when we installed Scully. Let's create another one:
- Run the following
generate
command of the Angular CLI:ng generate @scullyio/init:post --name="Angular and Scully"
In the preceding command, we use the
@scullyio/init:post
schematic, passing the name of the post that we want to create as an option. - Set the target folder for the new blog post to
mdfiles
:Figure 2.10 – New blog post target folder
- Scully will create a Markdown file named
angular-and-scully.md
inside the specified folder. Open that file and update its content to be the same as the following:--- title: 'Angular and Scully' description: 'How to build a blog with Angular and Scully' published: true --- # Angular and Scully Angular is a robust JavaScript framework that we can use to build excellent and performant web applications. Scully is a popular static website generator that empowers the Angular framework with Jamstack characteristics. You can find more about them in the following links: - https://angular.io - https://scully.io - https://www.jamstack.org
- Run
npm run scully
to create a route for the newly created blog post. Scully will also update thescully-routes.json
file with the new route.
If we preview our application now, it should look like the following:

Figure 2.11 – List of blog posts
If we click on one of the blog items, we will navigate to the selected blog post. The content that is currently shown on the screen is a prerendered version of the blog post route:

Figure 2.12 – Blog post details
To verify that, navigate to the dist
folder of your Angular project, where you will find two folders:
my-blog
: This contains the Angular live version of our application. When we execute theng build
Angular CLI command, it builds our application and outputs bundle files in this folder.static
: This contains a prerendered version of our Angular application generated from Scully when we run thenpm run scully
command.
If we navigate to the static
folder, we will see that Scully has created one folder for each route of our Angular application. Each folder contains an index.html
file, which represents the component that is activated from that route. The contents of the index.html
file are auto-generated from Scully, and it is the result as if we run our application live and navigate to that component.
Now you can take your Angular application, upload it to the CDN or web server of your choice, and you will have your blog ready in no time! All you will have to do then will be to exercise your writing skills to create excellent blog content.
Summary
In this chapter, we learned how to combine the Angular framework with the Scully library to create a personal blog.
We saw how Angular uses the built-in router package to enhance web applications with in-app navigation. We also learned how to organize an Angular application into modules and how to navigate through these.
We introduced Jamstack to our Angular application using the Scully library and saw how easy it is to convert our application into a prerendered blog. We used the Scully interface to create some blog posts and display them on the screen.
In the following chapter, we will investigate another exciting feature of the Angular framework, forms. We are going to learn how to use them and build an issue-tracking system.
Practice questions
Let's take a look at a few practice questions:
- Which library do we use for routing in an Angular application?
- How do we add routing capabilities in an HTML anchor element?
- Which Angular pipe do we use for date formatting?
- What is the purpose of the
assets
folder in an Angular CLI application? - Which route property do we use for lazily loading a module?
- Which Angular CLI command we use for installing Scully?
- Which service do we use for fetching Scully routes?
- What is the property binding?
- Which Angular directive do we use for iterating over an array in HTML?
- What is the difference between a standard Angular application and a Scully one?
Further reading
Here are some links to build upon what we learned in this chapter:
- Angular routing: https://angular.io/guide/router
- Angular feature modules: https://angular.io/guide/module-types
- Lazy loading modules: https://angular.io/guide/lazy-loading-ngmodules
- Angular built-in pipes: https://angular.io/api?type=pipe
- Bootstrap CSS: https://getbootstrap.com/
- Jamstack: https://jamstack.org/
- Scully: https://scully.io/
- Mastering Markdown: https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/