Lazy Loading with Angular

In Angular, lazy loading is a technique that allows you to load JavaScript components and modules asynchronously when a specific route is activated. Lazy loading can help shrink the initial download and enhance performance, especially if you have a large solution with many components with complex routing.

Some of the benefits of lazy loading include:

• Minimize the size of the initial load bundle.
• Load feature areas only when requested by the user.
• Speed up load time for users that only visit certain areas of the application.

Start by creating a new module within your existing application. Determine where you want this module to live within your current structure. For the Sample App, we’re using /src/app/modules. Once navigating to that location in a command prompt, use CLI to create a new module.

C:[path to application root]/src/app/modules>ng g m lazy-load
CREATE src/app/modules/lazy-load/lazy-load.module.ts (192 bytes)

Next create a new components folder within the lazy-load module folder, navigate to it and create a new component using CLI.

C:[path to application root]/src/app/modules/lazy-load/components>ng g c lazy-load
CREATE src/app/modules/lazy-load/component/lazy-load.component.ts (117 bytes)

In your newly created module, import the necessary modules to create a basic page. Then set up a simple route using the ** wildcard so when loading this module it defaults to the root path.

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { CommonModule } from '@angular/common';
import { Routes, RouterModule } from '@angular/router';

import { JhaLayoutModule } from '@jha/jharesponsive/jha-layout';

import { LazyLoadComponent } from './components/lazy-load/lazy-load.component';


const routes: Routes = [
    { path: '**', component: LazyLoadComponent }
];

@NgModule({
    declarations: [
        LazyLoadComponent
    ],
    imports: [
        CommonModule,
        RouterModule.forChild(routes),
        JhaLayoutModule
    ]
})
export class LazyLoadModule { }

Once your new module is set up, update the route table in your parent application to include a route definition to the lazy load module.

Instead of specifying a component property, use the loadChildren property and import the module, supplying the path relative to the app root.

const routes: Routes =
    [
        { path: '', redirectTo: '/Home', pathMatch: 'full' },
        { path: 'Home', component: HomeComponent },
        ...
        { path: 'LazyLoad', loadChildren: () => import('./modules/lazy-load/lazy-load.module').then(m => m.LazyLoadModule)}
    ];

Finally, create a navigation item pointing to your new module route.

<jha-nav-button jhaIconType="Information" jhaText="Lazy Load Example" jhaTooltip="Example of a lazy loaded module" jhaRouterLink="/LazyLoad"></jha-nav-button>

To confirm it’s working, load your application in a browser. When you navigate to the new /LazyLoad url, you will see a new js file loaded in the Network tab of your Inspector window.