Scope

The job of the Scope is to detect changes to model objects and create an execution context for expressions. There is one root scope for the application (ng-app) with hierarchical children scopes. It marshals the model to the view and forwards events to the controller.

Controller

The Controller is responsible for construction of the model and connects it to the view (HTML). The scope sits between the controller and the view. Controllers should be straightforward and simply contain the business logic needed for a view. Generally you want thin controllers and rich services. Controllers can be nested and handle inheritance. The big difference in AngularJS from the other JavaScript frameworks is there is no DOM manipulation in controllers. It is something to unlearn when developing in AngularJS.

Model

In AngularJS, a Model is simply a JavaScript object. No need to extend anything or create any structure. This allows for nested models - something that Backbone doesn’t do out-of-the-box.

View

The View is based on DOM objects, not on strings. The view is the HTML. HTML is declarative – well suited for UI design. The View should not contain any functional behavior. The flexibility here is to allow for multiple views per Controller.

Services

The Services in AngularJS are singletons that perform common tasks for web applications. If you need to share common functionality between Controllers, then use Services. Built-in AngularJS, Services start with a $. There are several ways to build a service: Service API, Factory API, or the $provide API.

Data Binding

Data Binding in AngularJS is a two-way binding between the View and the Model. Automatic synchronizing between views and data models makes this really easy (and straightforward) to use. Updating the model is reflected in View without any explicit JavaScript code to bind them together, or to add event listeners to reflect data changes.

Directives

Now this is cool. AngularJS allows you to use Directives to transform the DOM or to create new behavior. A directive allows you to extend the HTML vocabulary in a declarative fashion. The ‘ng’ prefix stands for built-in AngularJS directives. The App (ng-app), Model (ng-model), the Controller (ng-controller), etc. are built into the framework. AngularJS allows for building your own directives. Building directives is not extremely difficult, but not easy either. There are different things that can be done with them. Please check out AngularJS’s documentation on directives.

Filters

The Filters in AngularJS perform data transformation. They can be used to do formatting (like I did in my Directives example with padding zeros), or they can be used to do filter results (think search).

Validation

AngularJS has some built-in validation around HTML5 input variables (text, number, URL, email, radio, checkbox) and some directives (required, pattern, minlength, maxlength, min, max). If you want to create your own validation, it is just as simple as creating a directive to perform your validation.

Testable

Testing is a big concern for enterprise applications. There are several different ways to write and run tests against JavaScript code, thus against AngularJS. The developers at AngularJS advocate using Jasmine tests ran using Testacular. I have found this method of testing very straightforward and, while writing tests may not be the most enjoyable, it is just as importable as any other piece of developing an application.