Tips for improving the performance of Ionic Angular apps

Smart strategies for improving your Ionic Angular app performance!

Ionic and Angular have garnered loads of accolades for being incredible frameworks that architect futuristic apps. Ionic has smartly integrated other useful frameworks like Angular and Cordova within its eco-system to deliver the best results. Angular too is loaded with goodies. The combined attributes of these two compatible frameworks- Ionic and Angular - are being utilized by Ionic App Development Companies to create groundbreaking apps.

Yet, one of the commonest complaints of app developers is that Ionic-Angular apps fail to perform like native apps. Well, in reality, the majority of the performance issues crop up due to ignorance, misjudgment, and lapses that occur during the developmental process. The reason is app developers have to deal with challenging situations like creating novel functionalities; a continual influx of bugs that have to be fixed and a lack of proficiency and experience among developers. So, they often miss out on selecting the right path.

Thankfully, there are effective strategies to minimize performance-related issues. I have penned down some of the tried and tested practices that will enhance your Ionic-Angular apps’ performance.

Handy Tips for improving the performance of your Ionic-Angular apps Reduction of app bundle size using source map explorer All contemporary web apps like Angular undergo a transformation before they run in a web browser. This is done by combining the JavaScript files and then minifying them. During the process of debugging an app or reviewing its bundle size, source maps are used to inspect the source.

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These source maps help in mapping the modified source to the primary source. Inspecting these source maps, one comes to know what is going on between the original code created by the developer and the code that reaches the end-user.

The Angular team suggests using the source-map-explorer tool for visualizing the code distribution of your application through the following steps:      

First Install source map explorer tool. Open the angular.json file and set the “namedChunks” and “sourceMap” to true.

Create a production build for the application.

Run the source-map-explorer tool and specify which JavaScript file is to be analysed.

The aforesaid action will open visualization of the code distribution of the app along with the original code written and the libraries used for the same.

Review the app’s code minutely.

Then remove the redundant code, unnecessary imports, and unused libraries and also clean up the unused references; to ensure that the bundle size gets reduced.

Configuring size budgets It’s a challenging task to reduce the size of an application once the production starts. So, apart from analyzing bundle sizes, one must also configure size budgets. Defining budget thresholds makes sure that the size of the app remains within the boundaries that have been set. The budgets are to be set as per the needs of a particular app. If the initial size of the app exceeds the set limit, the Angular CLI displays a console warning during the development process. If the size is too big as compared to the desired limit the build is bound to fail.

Splitting the application into modules for native Angular lazy loading Lazy loaded modules get loaded on-demand when users navigate to their route for the first time.

This practice reduces the initial bundle size and works wonders to boost the app’s performance. The command “ng generate” has to be used for building a lazily loaded module. The Ionic Angular applications readily accept lazy loading. Lazy loading is pre-configured in the latest Ionic apps that are built employing the “Ionic start” command. So, the ensuing app pages crafted using the “generate” command of the Ionic CLI is automatically configured as lazy loaded modules.

Regularly updating the dependencies and CLI It is advisable to update the Ionic dependencies and the Angular CLI employing the “ng update”.

During the Angular CLI updating procedure, the Angular team ensures that the Angular packages are updated and the code transformations you require are applied. Updating Ionic dependencies too can be executed effortlessly using a single command. If you are doubtful whether all the dependencies are going to work together, refer to the “package.json” files from the starter template apps of Ionic and Angular, at regular intervals. These files are being updated constantly with the newest compatible versions by DevRel teams and the Ionic team. One can refer to the Angular update guide as well to understand the procedure of updates.

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Additions of a Browsers list file for reduction of build times A Browsers list file is one that specifies the browsers supported by an application. This information can be used by developer tools in different ways, one of them being applying build process optimizations for reducing the app’s build times. Therefore, consider adding a Browsers list file, if it is not present in your app’s ecosystem. Including this file with the default configuration disables ES5 build that actually reduced app build time considerably.

Preloading of Ionic Components Loading of Ionic components takes time when the HTML template or file is parsed.Pre-loading of Ionic components reduces the time taken to parse.

Implementing Ahead-of-Time compiling Enhance the app’s performance by implementing Ahead-of-Time compiling. This compiles templates at the build time instead of the runtime resulting in quicker rendering of views and reduced app launch times. Furthermore, this move exposes template binding errors, if any, thereby enabling the developers to resolve the issue before shipping the code.

Exhaustive testing     

Use developer tools for testing non-Cordova related app logic in a desktop browser.

Use console logging extensively wherever relevant.

Run performance tests that measure the timing for various operations.

If a suite of testing tools and devices are not available, test using Android stimulators and Xcode.

Use opendevicelabs.com to examine how the app performs on various devices.

Final verdict The aforesaid tips are sure to tweak your Ionic-Angular app’s performance. For further queries do write to us at sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com. Biz4solutions is a leading Mobile App Development Company, offering Ionic and Angular app development services with a focus on providing robust and effective solutions.

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