September 28, 2017
  • All
  • Angular
  • Framework
  • Ionic

Updates for all: Ionic-angular 3.7 and more!

Dan Bucholtz

I'm a software engineer for Io...

Happy Thursday Ionites! We’re hope you’re enjoying all that Autumn 🍂 – the best season – has to offer. Today we’re releasing ionic-angular 3.7.0 and @ionic/app-scripts 3.0.0. These releases have a lot to offer, so let’s dive into each of them.

Ionic Updates

ionic-angular 3.7.0 is a minor release that adds support for the latest version of Angular, version 4.4.3. This includes a lot of bug fixes, improvements, as well as the new Angular HTTPClient! We’ve also started the process of adjusting our CSS to add support for the upcoming iPhone X. This includes taking advantage of some great new CSS features in iOS11, which you can read about here . 3.7.0 includes a few important changes, with more coming in the next release of Ionic. We’ll also update Ionic 1.x with the necessary changes needed to support the iPhone X. Expect to hear more about this soon.

In addition to the CSS changes and updates to dependencies, there are several important bug fixes in the release. Check out the changelog for more info. ionic-angular 3.7.0 is a drop-in replacement for version 3.6.1, so you’re just an npm install away from being up and running with the latest.

Build Process Updates

@ionic/app-scripts 3.0.0 is a major release with several new features. We’ve added support for ngo, the build optimizer tool created by the Angular team. Using ngo should result in apps that are smaller and boot faster. For the sake of build time, ngo is only used when the --prod or --optimizejs flags are passed. In addition to ngo, we squashed some pesky bugs in an app’s source maps to improve the debugging experience. Finally, we’ve cleaned up a lot of the code base, deprecated some unused tools, and refactored the code to be agnostic to the angular version. Overall, @ionic/app-scripts 3.0.0 is a large internal change, but should be a drop-in replacement.

If you are using a custom webpack configuration, there is a breaking change to the config. Please review the changelog and let us know if you experience any issues.

Upgrade Instructions

To upgrade an existing project with these new versions, simply run the following commands:

npm install -g ionic@latest
npm install ionic-angular@3.7.0 --save
npm install @ionic/app-scripts@3.0.0 --save-dev
npm install @angular/core@4.4.3 --save
npm install @angular/common@4.4.3 --save
npm install @angular/compiler@4.4.3 --save
npm install @angular/compiler-cli@4.4.3 --save
npm install @angular/forms@4.4.3 --save
npm install @angular/http@4.4.3 --save
npm install @angular/platform-browser@4.4.3 --save
npm install @angular/platform-browser-dynamic@4.4.3 --save
npm install rxjs@5.4.3 --save
npm install zone.js@0.8.17 --save

What’s Next

In addition to improving ionic-angular 3.x, we’re busy marching towards the next major release, ionic-angular 4.0.0.

With version 4.0.0, we are refactoring our internal code base to move towards web components, via Stencil. Ultimately, this refactor will make Ionic framework agnostic.

What does this mean for you, a developer with an existing Ionic app? Well, the answer is probably not much. Your app will work the same way it does today. There will be a few updates that will need to be made to your codebase, but we’re aiming to keep these to a minimum!

This internal refactor is not something that developer’s building with Ionic really need to be concerned with. Our goal is to keep APIs as close to what they are today as possible. In our testing, we’ve seen apps boot significantly faster, and improved runtime performance. Needless to say, we’re extremely excited about that!

Stencil Preview

A few weeks back at the Polymer Conf, we announced Stencil, a new open-source tool for creating standard web components. We’re super excited about Stencil and the impact that it can have on the web ecosystem! See the introduction video here.

Closing Thoughts

We’re pretty pumped up about the improvements and bug fixes in ionic-angular 3.7.0 and @ionic/app-scripts 3.0.0. Every time we put out a new release, our goal is for it to improve your app’s capabilities or performance, or to improve the developer experience. We think today’s updates check all of the boxes.

Please check out the new releases and let us know if you experience any issues. Have a great end of the week and happy hacking


Dan Bucholtz

I'm a software engineer for Io...