Angular JS services by Jim Levin is a delightful addition to a topic which isn’t discussed as much as the framework itself. Angular, as a powerful structural framework for dynamic web apps has been topic of various well publicized texts. However the services, which provide the core of backend functionality, don’t get much lime-light. c’est la vie.
In Angular, services are designed as substitutable objects that are wired together using dependency injection (DI); therefore the understanding of law of demeter is quite important. Author started with fundamentals without much ado, and seamlessly transitioned into discussion about testability, mocking, data management and business logic handling. Handling cross cutting concerns (chapter 4) and Mash-ups (chapter 6) are especially interesting topics. BDD using Jasmine spies (test doubles) is also a treat for behavior-driven development fans.
The notion of designing services, tenets, best practices and architecting services for testability are topics every developer should pay attention to. Levin discusses service building best practices, factories and providers in a concrete and concise fashion with easy to understand code samples.
The book assumes that one is already familiar with JavaScript and have some experience writing applications using Angular. The quality of print vs. cost is a letdown; I hope it improves in next editions.
[Disclaimer] I have received the review copy from the publisher.
