Angular Material and UI Components in Angular

Angular Material and UI Components in Angular

Introduction:
Angular Material is a UI component library developed and maintained by the Angular team. It provides a set of pre-built and customizable UI components to enhance the look and feel of Angular applications, allowing developers to build beautiful and responsive user interfaces.

I. Installing Angular Material:
To use Angular Material in your Angular project, you need to install it first. Follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal and navigate to your project directory.
2. Run the following command to install Angular Material and its required dependencies:

bash
ng add @angular/material

3. During the installation, you'll be prompted to choose a pre-built theme and whether to enable animations.

II. Using Angular Material Components:

1. Button:
Angular Material provides a stylish and versatile button component. To use it, import the MatButtonModule in your app module:

typescript
import { MatButtonModule } from '@angular/material/button';

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatButtonModule],
  // Other module configurations...
})
export class AppModule { }

In your template file, you can use the button component like this:

html
<button mat-button>Click Me</button>

2. Card:
The card component is useful for displaying content in a visually appealing manner. Import MatCardModule:

typescript
import { MatCardModule } from '@angular/material/card';

@NgModule({
  imports: [MatCardModule],
  // Other module configurations...
})
export class AppModule { }

Use the card component in your template:

html
<mat-card>
  <mat-card-header>
    <mat-card-title>Card Title</mat-card-title>
  </mat-card-header>
  <mat-card-content>
    Content goes here.
  </mat-card-content>
</mat-card>

III. Creating a Custom Angular Material Theme:
You can customize the appearance of Angular Material components by creating a custom theme. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Create a new file, e.g., custom-theme.scss, in your project's src folder.
2. Define your custom theme variables in the custom-theme.scss file:

scss
@import '~@angular/material/theming';

$custom-primary: mat-palette($mat-indigo);
$custom-accent: mat-palette($mat-pink, A200, A100, A400);
$custom-warn: mat-palette($mat-red);

$custom-theme: mat-light-theme($custom-primary, $custom-accent, $custom-warn);

@include angular-material-theme($custom-theme);

3. Update your angular.json file to include the custom theme file in the styles array:

json
"styles": [
  "src/styles.scss",
  "src/custom-theme.scss"
],

Conclusion:
Angular Material provides a wide range of UI components that can significantly enhance your Angular application's user interface. By following the installation and usage examples, you can easily integrate and customize these components to create a visually appealing and interactive user experience.