An app shell lets Universal render a portion of your application via a route at build time.
This gives users a meaningful first paint of your application that appears quickly
because the browser can simply render the HTML without the need to initialize any JavaScript.
Use this command with a routing app that is accompanied by a Universal server-side app.
To create an app shell, use the following command.
ng generate app-shell my-app
- `my-app` is the name of your client application
- `server-app` is the name of the Universal (server) application
The command adds two new architect build targets to your `angular.json` configuration file (along with a few other changes).
"server": {
"builder": "@angular-devkit/build-angular:server",
"options": {
"outputPath": "dist/my-app-server",
"main": "src/main.server.ts",
"tsConfig": "src/tsconfig.server.json"
}
},
"app-shell": {
"builder": "@angular-devkit/build-angular:app-shell",
"options": {
"browserTarget": "my-app:build",
"serverTarget": "my-app:server",
"route": "shell"
}
}
To verify the that the app has been built with the default shell content:
1. Run the app-shell target.
ng run my-app:app-shell
1. Open `dist/app-shell/index.html` in your browser.
The default text "app-shell works!" verifies that the app-shell route was rendered as part of the output.