Angular js for non single-page Applications

Question

I've been learning Angular 2 recently, and I must say that this is a great framework if I wanted to build a single-page application.

However, I was wondering how one would integrate angular with a normal, old style websites (say, built on codeigniter) if they only wanted the two way binding functionality?

Of course, I could use angular 2 for that, but with all the routing machinery of angular, it seems rather... out of place. It just seems like I'm trying to use an axe as a hammer.

So, my question is: what would you suggest to someone who wants to build a non single-page website, with old school loading pages, but for the page itself to be very interactive and utilize two way binding? For example, a users list which is a page in itself, but pagination is done via ajax... etc Should I just go with angular2, or maybe another library that's simply more suited for this purpose? Some suggested that ReactJS may just be what I'm looking for.

What do you think?

Answer 1

Although it's true that

client-side routing is just a small piece

of a very large framework, the fact that the structure of a Angular (2) project has exactly 1 index.html file with no server side code, at least implicitly tells us that there's a lot of framework intended for SPAs which a multi-page application may not need.

If what makes Angular 2 a great framework for you is data binding and productivity then have a look at Ember.js. Ember makes it easy to follow best practices rather than spending time on trivial choices.