Angular Proposes Fine-Grained Reactivity With Signals

Reactivity with Signals has the potential to fundamentally change how we write Angular applications

Angular has announced a prototype that adds a ‘Signal’ reactive primitive to the framework. Reactivity with Signals has the potential to fundamentally change how we write Angular applications. This post addresses a few key questions related to this proposal:

1. What is Angular’s current Reactivity System?
2. Where did this proposal come from?
3. What is “Reactivity with Signals” and how does it improve Angular’s Reactivity System?
4. What does this mean for RxJS?

1. The Current State of Angular’s Reactivity: MonkeyPatching with Zone.js

Angular’s reactivity system is due for an upgrade. It is built on Zone.js, which is a library that monkey-patches the Browser API (Promise, addEventListener, setTimeout). These monkey-patches allow Angular to hook into browser events, trigger DOM updates, and propagate changes throughout the application using a top-down approach.

I’ll let this tweet by Node.js Technical Steering Committee member Matteo Collina speak for itself:

Matteo Collina warning against monkey patching global objects

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