Angular 2 Components vs Portlets

Question

In the new Angular 2, we have Components. Can this be compared to Portlets? Even though this is not independently deploy-able. What are the pros and cons of these two approaches?

Answer 1

This is like comparing apples with oranges. Angular2 components are meant for developing SPA applications (single page applications). These are javascript, front-end only applications that need full ownership of the browser's page.

Java portlets (I guess you mean Liferay or JSR 268 portlets) on the other side are both front-end and back-end applications that do not own the page. They live inside a container that orchestrates things and share the page with other portlets. Main goal of the portlet is to be able to work in different scenarios and co-operate with other components.

It is indeed technically possible to use Angular2 for the front-end part of a portlet. However, I wouldn't recommended this, as you would need to deviate a lot of standard Angular and Portlet practices and probably compromise the re-usability of the portlet.

For the above reasons, it is impossible to directly compare these two technologies, as they aim to cover different needs. If your goal is to use a modern javascript framework for the front-end part of your portlets, I would suggest to look instead at javascript libraries, like Backbone.