Setup and the Angular CLI

Installing Angular and Using the CLI

The Angular CLI (@angular/cli) is your primary tool for scaffolding, generating, building, testing, and serving Angular applications. Install it globally with npm or pnpm, then use ng new to create a project.

npm install -g @angular/cli

# Create a new Angular project
ng new my-app --standalone --routing --style=scss

cd my-app
ng serve

Key CLI Commands

1. ng new <name> — scaffold a new workspace and application
2. ng serve — run the dev server with hot module replacement
3. ng generate component <name> (or ng g c) — create a component
4. ng generate service <name> — create a service
5. ng build --configuration production — compile for production
6. ng test — run unit tests via Karma/Jest
7. ng lint — lint the project

Project Structure

A freshly generated Angular project includes src/app/ for your application code, src/main.ts as the bootstrap entry point, angular.json for workspace configuration, and tsconfig.json for TypeScript settings. The CLI keeps these files in sync as you generate more pieces.

# Generate a feature component
ng g c features/dashboard --standalone

# Generate a service
ng g s services/user

# Generate a route guard
ng g guard guards/auth