Library Types

There are many different types of libraries in a workspace. In order to maintain a certain sense of order, we recommend having a small number of types, such as the below four (4) types of libraries.

Feature libraries:

Developers should consider feature libraries as libraries that implement smart UI (with access to data sources) for specific business use cases or pages in an application.

UI libraries:

A UI library contains only presentational components (also called "dumb" components).

Data-access libraries:

A data-access library contains code for interacting with a back-end system. It also includes all the code related to state management.

Utility libraries:

A utility library contains low-level utilities used by many libraries and applications.

Feature Libraries

What is it?

A feature library contains a set of files that configure a business use case or a page in an application. Most of the components in such a library are smart components that interact with data sources. This type of library also contains most of the UI logic, form validation code, etc. Feature libraries are almost always app-specific and are often lazy-loaded.

Naming Convention

feature (if nested) or feature-\* (e.g., feature-home).

Dependency Constraints

A feature library can depend on any type of library.

libs/
└── my-app/
    └── feature-home/
        └── src/
            ├── index.ts
            └── lib/

feature-home is the app-specific feature library (in this case, the "my-app" app).

UI Libraries

What is it?

A UI library is a collection of related presentational components. There are generally no services injected into these components (all of the data they need should come from Inputs).

Naming Convention

ui (if nested) or ui-\* (e.g., ui-buttons)

Dependency Constraints

A ui library can depend on ui and util libraries.

Data-access Libraries

What is it?

Data-access libraries contain code that function as client-side delegate layers to server tier APIs.

All files related to state management also reside in a data-access folder (by convention, they can be grouped under a +state folder under src/lib).

Naming Convention

data-access (if nested) or data-access-\* (e.g. data-access-seatmap)

Dependency Constraints

A data-access library can depend on data-access and util libraries.

Utility Libraries

What is it?

A utility library contains low level code used by many libraries. Often there is no framework-specific code and the library is simply a collection of utilities or pure functions.

Naming Convention

util (if nested), or util-\* (e.g., util-testing)

Dependency Constraints

A utility library can depend only on utility libraries.

An example ui lib module: libs/shared/util-formatting

export { formatDate, formatTime } from './src/format-date-fns';
export { formatCurrency } from './src/format-currency';

Other Types

You will probably come up with other library types that make sense for your organization. That's fine. Just keep a few things in mind:

  • Keep the number of library types low
  • Clearly document what each type of library means