# Architecture Document
Generated: Tuesday, September 16, 2025

## System Overview
The Angular Clarity Boilerplate is a frontend-only, single-page application (SPA) template. It is designed to serve as a foundational starting point for developing enterprise-grade web applications. The system provides a pre-configured, modular, and scalable architecture using the Angular framework and is visually styled with the VMware Clarity Design System. Its primary purpose is to accelerate development by providing a structured and feature-rich starting point.

## Architecture Pattern
The boilerplate is built upon a **Component-Based Architecture**, which is fundamental to the Angular framework. The UI is composed of a tree of reusable and encapsulated components.

The overall architectural pattern follows best practices for scalable Angular applications, emphasizing a **Modular Design**. The application is segregated into a `CoreModule`, a `SharedModule`, and is designed for the addition of multiple `FeatureModules`. This structure promotes separation of concerns, reusability, and maintainability.

## Component Design (Frontend)

- **AppModule:** The root module of the application, responsible for bootstrapping the `AppComponent` and importing essential modules like the `CoreModule` and `AppRoutingModule`.

- **AppComponent:** The main application shell component. It contains the primary layout, including the Clarity header, sidebar navigation, and the main content area where routed components are displayed via `<router-outlet>`.

- **CoreModule:** This module is designed to be imported only once by the `AppModule`. It contains singleton services, route guards, and other one-time setup logic (e.g., HTTP interceptors). This pattern prevents services from being provided multiple times across the application.

- **SharedModule:** This module contains commonly used components, directives, and pipes that can be reused across different feature modules. It is imported by feature modules whenever they need access to these shared elements. It primarily exports common Angular modules (like `CommonModule`, `FormsModule`) and Clarity UI modules.

- **Feature Modules (Conceptual):** The architecture is designed for developers to create new feature modules (e.g., `DashboardModule`, `AdminModule`). These modules encapsulate all the components, services, and routing related to a specific business domain. They are typically **lazy-loaded** to improve initial application load performance.

## Data Architecture

### Primary Database
- Not applicable. As a frontend-only boilerplate, this project does not include a database. It is designed to connect to any backend with a data persistence layer.

### Data Model (Client-Side)
- Data models will be defined using **TypeScript interfaces or classes** within feature modules. These models will represent the structure of data objects retrieved from or sent to the backend API.
- **Example `User` model:**
  ```typescript
  export interface User {
    id: number;
    name: string;
    email: string;
    role: 'admin' | 'user';
  }

  Of course. Here is the architecture_document.md for the Angular Clarity boilerplate project, presented in a single code block for easy copying.

Markdown

# Architecture Document
Generated: Tuesday, September 16, 2025

## System Overview
The Angular Clarity Boilerplate is a frontend-only, single-page application (SPA) template. It is designed to serve as a foundational starting point for developing enterprise-grade web applications. The system provides a pre-configured, modular, and scalable architecture using the Angular framework and is visually styled with the VMware Clarity Design System. Its primary purpose is to accelerate development by providing a structured and feature-rich starting point.

## Architecture Pattern
The boilerplate is built upon a **Component-Based Architecture**, which is fundamental to the Angular framework. The UI is composed of a tree of reusable and encapsulated components.

The overall architectural pattern follows best practices for scalable Angular applications, emphasizing a **Modular Design**. The application is segregated into a `CoreModule`, a `SharedModule`, and is designed for the addition of multiple `FeatureModules`. This structure promotes separation of concerns, reusability, and maintainability.

## Component Design (Frontend)

- **AppModule:** The root module of the application, responsible for bootstrapping the `AppComponent` and importing essential modules like the `CoreModule` and `AppRoutingModule`.

- **AppComponent:** The main application shell component. It contains the primary layout, including the Clarity header, sidebar navigation, and the main content area where routed components are displayed via `<router-outlet>`.

- **CoreModule:** This module is designed to be imported only once by the `AppModule`. It contains singleton services, route guards, and other one-time setup logic (e.g., HTTP interceptors). This pattern prevents services from being provided multiple times across the application.

- **SharedModule:** This module contains commonly used components, directives, and pipes that can be reused across different feature modules. It is imported by feature modules whenever they need access to these shared elements. It primarily exports common Angular modules (like `CommonModule`, `FormsModule`) and Clarity UI modules.

- **Feature Modules (Conceptual):** The architecture is designed for developers to create new feature modules (e.g., `DashboardModule`, `AdminModule`). These modules encapsulate all the components, services, and routing related to a specific business domain. They are typically **lazy-loaded** to improve initial application load performance.

## Data Architecture

### Primary Database
- Not applicable. As a frontend-only boilerplate, this project does not include a database. It is designed to connect to any backend with a data persistence layer.

### Data Model (Client-Side)
- Data models will be defined using **TypeScript interfaces or classes** within feature modules. These models will represent the structure of data objects retrieved from or sent to the backend API.
- **Example `User` model:**
  ```typescript
  export interface User {
    id: number;
    name: string;
    email: string;
    role: 'admin' | 'user';
  }
Data Flow
API Call: A component's method calls a function in its corresponding service (e.g., userService.getUsers()).

Service Layer: The service uses Angular's HttpClient to make an HTTP request to the backend API.

Data Retrieval: The service receives the HTTP response and typically returns an Observable of the data, typed with the appropriate TypeScript interface.

Component Update: The component subscribes to the Observable. Once the data is received, it updates its local state, triggering Angular's change detection to re-render the template and display the new data.

API Design (Backend Communication)
This boilerplate is backend-agnostic. It is designed to communicate with any backend that exposes a RESTful or GraphQL API.

Communication Protocol
HTTP/HTTPS: Communication is handled via standard HTTP requests using Angular's HttpClient service.

Example Service Implementation
An example of a service making API calls:
// in user.service.ts
import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClient } from '@angular/common/http';
import { Observable } from 'rxjs';
import { User } from '../models/user.model';
import { environment } from '../../environments/environment';

@Injectable({
  providedIn: 'root'
})
export class UserService {
  private apiUrl = `${environment.apiBaseUrl}/users`;

  constructor(private http: HttpClient) { }

  getUsers(): Observable<User[]> {
    return this.http.get<User[]>(this.apiUrl);
  }

  getUserById(id: number): Observable<User> {
    return this.http.get<User>(`${this.apiUrl}/${id}`);
  }
}

Error Handling
HTTP interceptors can be provided in the CoreModule to handle API errors globally (e.g., logging errors, redirecting on 401 Unauthorized responses).

Security Architecture
Authentication: Authentication logic (e.g., handling JWTs, interacting with OAuth providers) should be encapsulated within an AuthService provided in the CoreModule.

Authorization (Route Guards): The architecture uses Angular's Route Guards to protect routes. An AuthGuard can be implemented to prevent unauthorized users from accessing certain parts of the application.

Client-Side Security: The boilerplate does not inherently protect against all client-side vulnerabilities. Developers should follow best practices for preventing XSS and CSRF attacks.

Scalability Considerations
Lazy Loading: The architecture strongly encourages the use of lazy-loaded feature modules. This ensures that the initial application bundle size remains small, leading to faster load times. As new features are added, they do not impact the initial load performance.

Modular Design: The strict separation of concerns into Core, Shared, and Feature modules makes the codebase easier to manage, test, and scale as the application grows in complexity.

State Management: For applications with complex state, a state management library like NgRx or Akita can be easily integrated into this architecture without requiring significant refactoring.