include _util-fns :marked Good tools make application development quicker and easier to maintain than if we did everything by hand. The [**Angular-CLI**](https://cli.angular.io/) is a **_command line interface_** tool that can create a project, add files, and perform a variety of on-going development tasks such as testing, bundling, and deployment. Our goal in this CLI QuickStart chapter is to build and run a super-simple Angular 2 application in TypeScript, using Angular-CLI while adhering to the [Style Guide](./guide/style-guide.html) recommendations that benefit _every_ Angular 2 project. By the end of the chapter, we'll have a basic understanding of development with the CLI and a foundation for both these documentation samples and our real world applications. We'll pursue these ends in the following high-level steps: 1. [Set up](#devenv) the development environment 2. [Create](#create-proj) a new project and skeleton application 3. [Serve](#serve) the application 4. [Edit](#first-component) the application .l-main-section h2#devenv Step 1. Set up the Development Environment :marked We need to set up our development environment before we can do anything. Install **[Node.jsĀ® and npm](https://nodejs.org/en/download/)** if they are not already on your machine. .l-sub-section :marked **Verify that you are running node `v5.x.x` and npm `3.x.x`** by running `node -v` and `npm -v` in a terminal/console window. Older versions produce errors. :marked Then **install the [Angular-CLI](https://github.com/angular/angular-cli)** globally. code-example(format=""). npm install -g angular-cli .l-main-section h2#create-project Step 2. Create a new project :marked Open a terminal window. .alert.is-important :marked _Windows Developers_: open a console window _as an **administrator**_. The Angular-CLI build steps later in this tutorial create symbolic links to various directories. These so-called _symlinks_ save time and space. But it takes administrator rights under Windows to create them. :marked Generate a new project and skeleton application by running the following commands: code-example(format=""). ng new cli-quickstart .l-sub-section :marked Patience please. It takes time to set up a new project, most of it spent installing npm packages. .l-main-section h2#serve Step 3: Serve the application :marked Go to the project directory and launch the server. code-example(format=""). cd cli-quickstart ng serve :marked The `ng serve` command launches the server, watches our files, and rebuilds the app as we make changes to the files. Open a browser on `http://localhost:4200/`; the app greets us with a message: figure.image-display img(src='/resources/images/devguide/cli-quickstart/app-works.png' alt="Our app works!") .l-main-section h2#first-component Step 4: Edit our first Angular component :marked The CLI created our first Angular component for us. This is the _root component_ and it is named after the project. We created the project with the name `cli-quickstart` so our component is `CliQuickstartAppComponent` and it's in the file `/src/app/cli-quickstart.component.ts` .l-sub-section :marked _CliQuickstartAppComponent_ is a _horrible name_. Almost everyone renames it to _AppComponent_ ... and renames all of the associated files to _app.component.??_ as we do throughout the documentation. We'll leave that step as an exercise. :marked Open the component file and change the `title` property from _cli-quickstart works!_ to _My First Angular 2 App_: +makeExample('cli-quickstart/ts/src/app/cli-quickstart.component.ts', 'title', 'src/app/cli-quickstart.component.ts')(format=".") :marked The browser reloads automatically and we see the revised title. That's nice, but we can make it look better. Open `src/app/cli-quickstart.component.css` and give our component some style +makeExample('cli-quickstart/ts/src/app/cli-quickstart.component.css', null, 'src/app/cli-quickstart.component.css')(format=".") figure.image-display img(src='/resources/images/devguide/cli-quickstart/my-first-app.png' alt="Output of QuickStart app") :marked Looking good! .l-main-section :marked ## What's next? Our first application doesn't do much. It's basically "Hello, World" for Angular 2. We kept it simple in our first pass: we wrote our first Angular 2 application using the angular CLI and modified our first component. That's about all we'd expect to do for a "Hello, World" app. **We have greater ambitions!** :marked We're about to take the next step and build a small application that demonstrates the great things we can build with Angular 2. Join us on the [Tour of Heroes Tutorial](./tutorial)! Or stick around a bit longer to learn a few things about what we just did.

.l-main-section h1#behind-the-code Behind the code :marked ### CliQuickstartAppComponent is the root of the application Every Angular app has at least one **root component**, that hosts the client user experience. Components are the basic building blocks of Angular applications. A component controls a portion of the screen — a *view* — through its associated template. This QuickStart has only one, extremely simple component. But it has the essential structure of every component we'll ever write: * one or more [import](#component-import) statements to reference the things we need. * a [@Component decorator](#component-decorator) that tells Angular what template to use and how to create the component. * a [component class](#component-class) that controls the appearance and behavior of a view through its template. a#component-import :marked ### Import Angular apps are modular. They consist of many files, each dedicated to a purpose. Angular itself is modular. It is a collection of library modules consisting of several, related features that we'll use to build our application. When we need something from a module or library, we import it. Here we import the `Component` decorator from the Angular 2 **_core_** library that we'll use as a decorator (`@Component`) to attach metadata to our component class. . +makeExcerpt('src/app/cli-quickstart.component.ts', 'import') h3#component-decorator @Component decorator :marked `Component` is a *decorator* function that associates Angular *metadata* with a component class. The metadata tell Angular how to create and display instances of this component. We apply this function to the component class by prefixing the function name with the **@** symbol and invoking it with a metadata object, just above the class. +makeExcerpt('src/app/cli-quickstart.component.ts', 'metadata') :marked This particular metadata object has four fields, a `moduleId`, a `selector` a `templateUrl` and an array of `styleUrls`. The **moduleId** specifies the location of _this_ component definition file so that Angular can find the corresponding _template_ and _style_ files with URLs that are relative to this component file. The module loader sets the value of `module.id` at runtime; we're using that value to set the metadata `moduleId` property. The **selector** is a [CSS selector](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Getting_Started/Selectors) identifying the HTML element that represents this component. The element tag name for this component is `cli-quickstart-app`. Angular creates and displays an instance of our `CliQuickstartAppComponent` wherever it encounters a `` element in the host HTML. The **templateUrl** locates the component's companion template HTML file. The template tells Angular how to render this component's view. Our template is a single `

` element surrounding some peculiar Angular data binding syntax. +makeExample('src/app/cli-quickstart.component.html', null, 'src/app/cli-quickstart.component.html')(format='.') :marked The `{{title}}` is an _interpolation_ binding that causes Angular to display the component's `title` property. After out edit, Angular displays _My First Angular 2 App_. We'll learn more about data binding as we read through the documentation. The **styleUrls** array specifies the location(s) of the component's private CSS style file(s). The CLI generated an empty file for us and we added styles to it. :marked ### Component class At the bottom of the component definition file is the component class named `CliQuickstartAppComponent`. +makeExcerpt('cli-quickstart/ts/src/app/cli-quickstart.component.ts', 'class') :marked This class contains the `title` property that we're displaying in our template. We can expand this class with more properties and application logic. We **export** `CliQuickstartAppComponent` so that we can **import** it elsewhere in our application ... as we're about to do. :marked ### The *main.ts* file How does Angular know what to do with our component? We have to tell it. We _bootstrap_ our application in the file `main.ts`. +makeExcerpt('src/main.ts', 'important') :marked We import the two things we need to launch the application: 1. Angular's browser `bootstrap` function 1. The application root component, `CliQuickstartAppComponent`. Then we call `bootstrap` with `CliQuickstartAppComponent`. ### Bootstrapping is platform-specific Notice that we import the `bootstrap` function from `@angular/platform-browser-dynamic`, not `@angular/core`. Bootstrapping isn't core because there isn't a single way to bootstrap the app. True, most applications that run in a browser call the bootstrap function from this library. But it is possible to load a component in a different environment. We might load it on a mobile device with [Apache Cordova](https://cordova.apache.org/) or [NativeScript](https://www.nativescript.org/). We might wish to render the first page of our application on the server to improve launch performance or facilitate [SEO](http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf). These targets require a different kind of bootstrap function that we'd import from a different library. ### Why create a *main.ts* file? Both `main.ts` and the application component files are tiny. This is just a QuickStart. We could have merged these two files into one and spared ourselves some complexity. We'd rather demonstrate the proper way to structure an Angular application. App bootstrapping is a separate concern from presenting a view. Mixing concerns creates difficulties down the road. We might launch the `CliQuickstartAppComponent` in multiple environments with different bootstrappers. Testing the component is much easier if it doesn't also try to run the entire application. Let's make the small extra effort to do it *the right way*. ### Loading the application with SystemJS The CLI uses `System.js` to load the application. We just need to call `System.import` and pass it our `main.ts` file to boot our application. +makeExcerpt('src/index.html', 'import') :marked ### Displaying the root component When Angular calls the `bootstrap` function in `main.ts`, it reads the `CliQuickstartAppComponent` metadata, finds the `cli-quickstart-app` selector, locates an element tag named `cli-quickstart-app` in the `` tag of the `index.html`, and renders our application's view between those tags. +makeExcerpt('src/index.html', 'body') :marked This is just a taste of Angular 2 develoment. There's much more to learn. Now really is the time to head over to the [Tour of Heroes Tutorial](./tutorial)!