How to add a third party library when using angular-cli?

Question

I wanted to try out creating an Angular 2 app with angular-cli (https://github.com/angular/angular-cli) and then use ng2-material (https://github.com/justindujardin/ng2-material) for UI components. But I just don't understand how / where I have to include the ng2-material library in order to use it.

I created a project with ng new myproject then I started the server with ng serve and opened the webpage which just worked out fine. Next step, I installed ng2-material with npm install ng2-material --save. Then I added MATERIAL_PROVIDERS to angular's bootstrap as is shown here https://github.com/AngularShowcase/angular2-seed-ng2-material/blob/master/app/bootstrap.ts.

This results in an error message GET http://localhost:4200/ng2-material/all 404 (Not Found) in the web browser, and I just can't figure out how to get rid of it.

angular-cli seems to be doing something to create a dist-folder where some of the node modules that are used in the index.html end up in, but I don't see where or how that's configured.

Answer 1

[EDIT 29/09/2016] Now that angular-cli is using webpack iso system.js, this answer doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. Check the pages '3d party lib installation' and 'global lib installation' on the angular-cli wiki.

[EDIT 10/05/2016] This is now described in full detail on the angular cli wiki.

This worked for me:

In the ember-cli-build.js, you add the dependency to the vendorNpmFiles, e.g.

module.exports = function (defaults) {   var app = new Angular2App(defaults, {       vendorNpmFiles: [           'a2-in-memory-web-api/web-api.js'       ]   });   return app.toTree(); } 

(where a2-in-memory-web-api/web-api.js is a file in my node_modules folder)

In the index.html you add the following line:

<script src="vendor/a2-in-memory-web-api/web-api.js"></script> 

Finally you restart your server.

Haven't tested it with angular material but you get the idea.