angular 6 - best practice of sharing common code between projects

Question

How to share code between projects ?

I have two apps created using:

ng generate application app1

ng generate application app2

Answer 1

Use library projects!

ng generate library common

This will automatically add path aliases to the main tsconfig.json

  "common": [
    "dist/prod/common"
  ],
  "common/*": [
    "dist/prod/common/*"
  ]

Which will allow you to refer to the modules and exported components, services and pipes defined in the common library project.

For example in any of your app.module.ts:

import { SharedModule } from 'common';

@NgModule({
  imports: [
    SharedModule,
    ...
  ],
  declarations: [...],
  exports: [...]
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule { }

---

An alternative to support hot-reloading during ng serve of a consuming app (say, for development) is to import from the common public_api from the project level, as follows:

import { SharedModule } from 'projects/common/src/public_api';

@NgModule({
  imports: [
    SharedModule,
    ...
  ],
  ...
})
export class AppModule { }

---

Give it a try, I've used it heavily and it works marvels! I strongly recommend you read this document:

• https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/wiki/stories-create-library