Dot UI Angular Standards

dotCMS Angular Standards (core-web)

Precedence. This skill overrides the vendored angular-developer skill for all work in this repository. That skill is upstream, generic Angular guidance: it assumes ng CLI, angular.json, Karma, and a greenfield app. None of those apply here. Where the two disagree, this skill wins. Use angular-developer only for framework concepts it explains better (signals semantics, DI resolution, routing APIs) — never for its tooling, project-creation, or standalone/changeDetection advice.

That skill is vendored byte-for-byte from upstream Angular and must never be hand-edited — new dotCMS rules belong here instead. See .agents/skills/angular-developer/PROVENANCE.md for its upstream source and re-sync procedure.

Source of truth

docs/frontend/ANGULAR_STANDARDS.md is the single source of truth for Angular work in this repository. Read it before writing or reviewing Angular code.

It has siblings — load the one your task needs, or docs/frontend/README.md (the index) if you are unsure:

This file is deliberately not a copy of it. It carries only:

1. the trigger (so it fires automatically when you touch frontend code),
2. the precedence declaration over the vendored angular-developer skill, and
3. the rules where upstream actively tells you to do the wrong thing here, so the correction is in front of you at the moment you would otherwise follow upstream.

Everything else — full rationale, examples, and the rules upstream already gets right — lives in the doc. If this file and the doc ever disagree, the doc wins and this file is the bug. When a standard changes, change it in the doc; only touch this file if the change is one upstream contradicts.

Workspace facts

• Nx monorepo rooted at core-web/. There is no angular.json — the workspace is driven by nx.json.
• Angular 22.x, PrimeNG 21.x, Tailwind 4.x, NgRx Signals 21.x, Jest 30, TypeScript 6, Node 22.22.3+.
• Package manager: pnpm (see packageManager in core-web/package.json).
• core-web/package.json is the source of truth for versions. Read it; never hardcode or assume a patch version.

Non-negotiables

1. Never write standalone: true

Standalone is the Angular default. The property is forbidden in decorators here. Remove it when you see it in a file you are already editing.

2. Never set changeDetection on a new component

OnPush is the framework default as of Angular v22 (docs), so an explicit ChangeDetectionStrategy.OnPush is redundant noise.

Components explicitly marked ChangeDetectionStrategy.Eager (the opt-in eager mode, renamed from Default in v22) opted in deliberately — leave them alone. Do not convert Eager to OnPush when touching a file for unrelated work.

3. Build, test, and serve through pnpm nx — never ng

There is no Angular CLI workspace here. Never yarn, never npm.

4. Testing is Jest 30 + @openng/spectator

• Never @ngneat/spectator — the workspace has fully migrated (0 occurrences remain). Never Karma, never Vitest.
• Select with byTestId and put data-testid on the elements you assert against.
• Set inputs with spectator.setInput(). Never assign to component properties directly.
• Mock stores in componentProviders, not providers.

5. Three files per component — .ts + .html + .scss

Inline template: and inline styles: in the decorator are forbidden. Reference the files with templateUrl and styleUrls (plural — matching docs/frontend/ANGULAR_STANDARDS.md and the dominant convention in the workspace).

6. Reuse before creating

Before creating a new component, in this order:

1. Check dotCMS's own components — core-web/libs/ui (@dotcms/ui) and the existing feature libs.
2. Check PrimeNG.
3. Only then create a new component — and say in the PR why neither of the above fit.

7. Every component that renders data handles all four states

loading, empty, error, loaded — explicitly. Never leave a blank render path. If a template has no branch for a state, that state is a bug.

8. Error handling is mandatory

No silent failures. No unguarded .subscribe(). No empty catchError. Handle the error in the service with catchError, surface a user-facing error state in the component, and log the diagnostic detail.

9. Icons are Material Symbols

<span class="material-symbols-outlined">drag_indicator</span>

The icon name goes in the element's text content, not in the class. Fonts are self-hosted via core-web/libs/dotcms-scss/shared/_material-symbols-outlined.scss.

• Existing PrimeIcons (pi pi-*) stay as they are — do not mass-migrate them.
• PrimeNG's internal icons are a theming concern and out of scope.
• Do not use the deprecated dot-icon component.

10. dotCMS-specific naming

These differ from stock Angular convention, so upstream will not tell you about them:

Covered in full by the doc — read it, do not rely on this file

docs/frontend/ANGULAR_STANDARDS.md is authoritative for everything below. Upstream Angular guidance already agrees with us on these, so they are not restated here and this file must not grow a second copy of them:

• Subscription teardown — inject(DestroyRef) + takeUntilDestroyed(); the legacy destroy$ pattern is not for new work and is not to be mass-migrated.
• Signal Forms first — new forms use @angular/forms/signals; existing Reactive Forms stay.
• TypeScript 6 — the transitional "ignoreDeprecations": "6.0" flag; new code must not rely on it.
• Standard modern Angular API — input() / output() over decorators, inject() over constructor injection, @if / @for (with track) / @switch over *ngIf / *ngFor / *ngSwitch, [class.x] / [style.x] over ngClass / ngStyle, and host bindings in the host: { … } object over @HostBinding / @HostListener.

Before you finish

• No standalone: true and no changeDetection added
• Any Eager component you touched is still Eager
• Three files exist for each new component; no inline template or styles
• Loading, empty, error, and loaded paths all render something
• Every stream is torn down with takeUntilDestroyed(destroyRef); every failure path is handled
• Specs use @openng/spectator, byTestId, and setInput()
• Verified with pnpm nx run <project>:test and pnpm nx run <project>:lint — not ng