As Angular Standalone Components become more popular, the developers are exploring better ways of structuring the applications. Angular Standalone Components shift away from NgModule, boosting modularity, performance, and runtime efficiency while simplifying dependency management. The new default standard on Angular 15 onwards is Angular Standalone Components, which makes development and modularity easy. Angular Standalone Components enable direct bootstrapping of components using bootstrapApplication(), eliminating redundant module declarations and minimizing boilerplate code. This leads to improved scalability and modularity in large-scale applications. In this blog, you will learn more about its structure, benefits, and ways to utilise it in your Angular development while contrasting the standalone ones with the traditional NgModule-based architectures.
What Are Angular Standalone Components?
Standalone Components represent a fundamental shift in Modern Angular Modularization, allowing the development of self-contained UI elements that do not require an NgModule for initialization. This streamlines Angular Dependency Management, improving maintainability and application performance. This approach was introduced in Angular 14 and Angular 15 and became stable. It improves maintainability, scalability, and performance. This adheres to the guidelines of the Modern Angular Modularization principle; apps have fewer dependencies and efficiently load.A Standalone Component is declared using standalone: true within the @Component decorator, ensuring that it operates independently of NgModule while still supporting Angular’s built-in dependency injection system. Whereas traditional components have the dependencies mounted on NgModule, Standalone Components take control over dependencies. As a result of this, Angular Dependency Management is free of unnecessary complexity, and applications load much faster by avoiding the excessive overhead of module resolution. Providing Angular Dependency Management lets the developers create an application structure that is lightweight and modular and, therefore, improves the runtime efficiency.
Benefits of Angular Standalone Components
With Adopting Angular Standalone Components in Modern Angular Modularization, you get benefits such as Simple Architecture, Performance Boost and Better Angular Dependency Management. By eliminating the need for NgModule, Standalone Components enforce a more streamlined and modular codebase, reducing redundant imports and improving runtime performance. This change is in line with the modern angular modularisation practice of reducing dependencies and improving overall performance.
The most significant advantage of Angular Standalone Components is a reduction in boilerplate code, where components can be initialised without the overhead of NgModule. In this way, less dependence on dependency resolution is required, thereby reducing load time and increasing runtime efficiency; these applications are more agile. Moreover, Angular BootstrapApplication enables components to be bootstrapped straight away without having to be inside an application wide module which improves the application boot up time. Angular’s bootstrapApplication() directly initializes components, skipping module resolution to cut startup overhead and enhance scalability.
Scalability is another crucial advantage. Large-scale applications are ideal for standalone components because they provide modularity and reusability (Kodali, 2022). Decoupling components from the central module allows the development of a micro front-end; that is,components can be treated as a separate module and managed and updated independently without significant dependence on one another.
Bootstrapping a Standalone Component
Legacy Angular used AppModule for bootstrapping, while Standalone Components with bootstrapApplication() simplify instantiation and speed up startup. However, if Standalone Components can now be initialised directly without AppModule, BootstrapApplication in Angular will be obsolete. This approach simplifies dependency management in Angular, does not bring unnecessary imports, and improves the app startup performance (Bampakos, 2021).
With the help of Standalone Components, you can bypass NgModule, which allows faster rendering, a more modular architecture and a lightweight, simple, and efficient application. This is particularly useful for modern, scalable applications, which can reduce overhead because they can be bootstrapped independently.
Importing Dependencies in Standalone Components
Angular Dependency Management is streamlined by Standalone Components, which can import modules directly within the @Component decorator. Necessary dependencies, like FormsModule, can be declared in imports: [] instead of relying on NgModule. This follows the Modern Angular Modularization, in which dependencies are better managed modularly to ensure optimal performance.
For example, it’s possible to get two-way data binding by importing FormsModule in a Standalone Component. This reduces dependency resolution significantly, improving application performance (Kodali, 2024). Furthermore, Angular Dependency Management helps keep unnecessary modules out of space, loading only the required modules.
Standalone Components vs. NgModules
Angular’s Standalone Components replace NgModule, cutting dependency overhead and optimizing management, though legacy apps may still need modules for compatibility (Xuan et al., 2021). Standalone components help simplify Angular Dependency Management and are great for new Angular Applications. Just like with Angular, a modern time will come when Angular will become the dominant standard and become less dependent on traditional NgModule structures.
| Criteria | Standalone Components | NgModule-Based Components |
|---|---|---|
| Best Suited For | New projects (Angular 15+) | Legacy applications |
| Application Size | Smaller, modular apps | Large-scale applications |
| Micro-Frontend Compatibility | Highly compatible | Requires additional configuration |
| Third-Party Library Support | Limited (some libraries still require NgModule) | Fully compatible |
| Code Complexity | Reduced, more lightweight | Higher due to module dependencies |
| Performance | Faster bootstrapping and rendering | Slightly slower due to module resolution |
Standalone components provide more flexibility, and NgModule continues to be essential for backward compatibility.
Best Practices for Standalone Components
Developers implementing these practices of Modern Angular Modularization will help maximize the efficiency of Angular Standalone Components. Feature-based architecture is the one effective approach which places related components, services and assets into dedicated folders which are part of dedicated feature folders. Using this method, the code maintainability will be enhanced, modularity will be improved, and scalability in large applications will be simplified.
Optimizing Angular Dependency Management is crucial for performance. In Standalone Components, selectively importing required modules within the imports: [] array minimizes bundle size and improves runtime efficiency. Moreover, you should use provideRouter() for navigation; use it without an NgModule but with a clean and efficient routing configuration (Rouzrokh et al., 2021).
Conclusion
Angular Standalone Components, using bootstrapApplication(), boost modularity, streamline dependencies, cut boilerplate, and enable a lightweight, scalable architecture. With the help of BootstrapApplication in Angular, developers can reduce the overhead of Angular Dependency Management, making Angular more scalable and robust. Standalone components will shape the future of Angular and, therefore, web development in general.
References
Bampakos, A., 2021. Angular Projects: Build modern web apps by exploring Angular 12 with 10 different projects and cutting-edge technologies. Packt Publishing Ltd.
Kodali, N., 2022. Angular’s Standalone Components: A Shift Towards Modular Design. Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education (TURCOMAT) ISSN, 3048, p.4855.
Kodali, N., 2024. The Evolution of Angular CLI and Schematics: Enhancing Developer Productivity in Modern Web Applications. International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology, 10(5), pp.805-812.
Rouzrokh, P., Wyles, C.C., Philbrick, K.A., Ramazanian, T., Weston, A.D., Cai, J.C., Taunton, M.J., Lewallen, D.G., Berry, D.J., Erickson, B.J. and Kremers, H.M., 2021. A deep learning tool for automated radiographic measurement of acetabular component inclination and version after total hip arthroplasty. The Journal of Arthroplasty, 36(7), pp.2510-2517.
Xuan, Q., Li, G., Yang, H., Gao, C., Jiang, B., Liu, X., Ji, J., Zhao, X. and Pei, G., 2021. Performance evaluation for the dielectric asymmetric compound parabolic concentrator with almost unity angular acceptance efficiency. Energy, 233, p.121065.
girianish.com 
Leave a comment