August 17, 2016

Dynamically Render Components with ComponentFactoryResolver in Angular 2

37 Comments

In my current project I came to a situation where it was necessary to drop specific components into my view. Since the project is a game and the current view should not be tied to URLs at this point i decided not to use the router but to load my various components dynamically into my view. This gives me the power to handle the logic in one persistent smart component which is bound to a URL.

My project was build with Ionic 2 and Angular, but i’ll go with plain Anuglar 2 for this blog post. The equivalent approach in Angular 1 would have used the $compile service. In Angular 2 there was a very simple approach using the ComponentResolver but the class is deprecated and will be removed from Angular 2. This blog post will guide you how to use the ComponentFactoryResolver together with NgModule in order to render Angular 2 components dynamically. This approach is only eligible for components that already exist in your application and not for components that will be received trough API calls for example. To live render external compontents take a look in this Stackoverflow question.

First of all lets create a fresh Angular 2 RC5 project. Make sure to have the angular-cli webpack beta installed to create a new project with RC5.

# Remove old versions 
npm uninstall -g angular-cli

# Install the new version
npm install --global angular-cli@1.0.0-beta.11-webpack.2

# Verify everything went good by
ng version 
# -> should return:  angular-cli: 1.0.0-beta.11-webpack.2

# Remove old versions

npm uninstall -g angular-cli

# Install the new version

npm install --global angular-cli@1.0.0-beta.11-webpack.2

# Verify everything went good by

ng version

# -> should return: angular-cli: 1.0.0-beta.11-webpack.2

Then create the new project:

ng new component-example

1	ng new component-example

And launch the project with:

cd component-example
ng serve

1 2	cd component-example ng serve

Now you are all set, lets get started with the actual code! This empty setup provides us with an AppComponent that will act as our host component in which we want to render several child components. So lets create the child components first.

 ng generate component child
 ng generate component another-child

1 2	ng generate component child ng generate component another-child

Instead of calling the components in our HTML code we want to inject them via JavaScript when needed. Since we have no logic lets just go with a setTimeout as initiator of the component rendering. Add this dummy code to your app components constructor:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: 'app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {
  title = 'app works!';
  constructor () {
    setTimeout(()=>{
      // at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:
      
      setTimeout(()=>{
        // at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

      }, 1000);
    }, 1000);
  }
}

import { Component } from '@angular/core';

@Component({

selector: 'app-root',

templateUrl: 'app.component.html',

styleUrls: ['app.component.css']

})

export class AppComponent {

title = 'app works!';

constructor () {

setTimeout(()=>{

// at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

setTimeout(()=>{

// at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

}, 1000);

}

Now add a DIV to the AppComponent which will hold our child components:

<h1>
  {{title}}
</h1>
<!--div #parent will contain our child components -->
<div #parent></div>

<h1>

</h1>

Capture the #parent element in your TypeScript code as follows:

import {Component, ViewChild, ViewContainerRef} from '@angular/core';
@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: 'app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {

  title = 'app works!';

  @ViewChild('parent', {read: ViewContainerRef})
  parent: ViewContainerRef;

  constructor () {
    setTimeout(()=>{
      // at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:
      
      setTimeout(()=>{
        // at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

      }, 1000);
    }, 1000);
  }
}

import {Component, ViewChild, ViewContainerRef} from '@angular/core';

@Component({

selector: 'app-root',

templateUrl: 'app.component.html',

styleUrls: ['app.component.css']

})

export class AppComponent {

title = 'app works!';

@ViewChild('parent', {read: ViewContainerRef})

parent: ViewContainerRef;

constructor () {

setTimeout(()=>{

// at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

setTimeout(()=>{

// at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

}, 1000);

}

To get the components we use the ComponentFactoryResolver, inject it into the constructor and declare 2 variables which will receive our components:

import {Component, ViewChild, ViewContainerRef, ComponentFactoryResolver} from '@angular/core';
import {ChildComponent} from "./child/child.component";
import {AnotherChildComponent} from "./another-child/another-child.component";

@Component({
 selector: 'app-root',
 templateUrl: 'app.component.html',
 styleUrls: ['app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {

 title = 'app works!';

 @ViewChild('parent', {read: ViewContainerRef})
 parent: ViewContainerRef;

 constructor (private componentFactoryResolver: ComponentFactoryResolver) {
  const childComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(ChildComponent); 
  const anotherChildComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(AnotherChildComponent)

 setTimeout(()=>{
 // at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:
 
 setTimeout(()=>{
 // at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

 }, 1000);
 }, 1000);
 }
}

import {Component, ViewChild, ViewContainerRef, ComponentFactoryResolver} from '@angular/core';

import {ChildComponent} from "./child/child.component";

import {AnotherChildComponent} from "./another-child/another-child.component";

@Component({

selector: 'app-root',

templateUrl: 'app.component.html',

styleUrls: ['app.component.css']

})

export class AppComponent {

title = 'app works!';

@ViewChild('parent', {read: ViewContainerRef})

parent: ViewContainerRef;

constructor (private componentFactoryResolver: ComponentFactoryResolver) {

const childComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(ChildComponent);

const anotherChildComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(AnotherChildComponent)

setTimeout(()=>{

// at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

setTimeout(()=>{

// at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

}, 1000);

}

Now we are ready to inject the childComponent and the anotherChildComponent into our view. To do so call the createComponent method on the parent object.

import {Component, ViewChild, ViewContainerRef, ComponentFactoryResolver} from '@angular/core';
import {ChildComponent} from "./child/child.component";
import {AnotherChildComponent} from "./another-child/another-child.component";

@Component({
 selector: 'app-root',
 templateUrl: 'app.component.html',
 styleUrls: ['app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {

 title = 'app works!';

 @ViewChild('parent', {read: ViewContainerRef})
 parent: ViewContainerRef;

 constructor (private componentFactoryResolver: ComponentFactoryResolver) {
 const childComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(ChildComponent); 
 const anotherChildComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(AnotherChildComponent)

 setTimeout(()=>{
 // at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:
  this.parent.createComponent(childComponent);

 setTimeout(()=>{
 // at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:
 this.parent.createComponent(anotherChildComponent);

 }, 1000);
 }, 1000);
 }
}

import {Component, ViewChild, ViewContainerRef, ComponentFactoryResolver} from '@angular/core';

import {ChildComponent} from "./child/child.component";

import {AnotherChildComponent} from "./another-child/another-child.component";

@Component({

selector: 'app-root',

templateUrl: 'app.component.html',

styleUrls: ['app.component.css']

})

export class AppComponent {

title = 'app works!';

@ViewChild('parent', {read: ViewContainerRef})

parent: ViewContainerRef;

constructor (private componentFactoryResolver: ComponentFactoryResolver) {

const childComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(ChildComponent);

const anotherChildComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(AnotherChildComponent)

setTimeout(()=>{

// at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

this.parent.createComponent(childComponent);

setTimeout(()=>{

// at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

this.parent.createComponent(anotherChildComponent);

}, 1000);

}

The last required step is to list the components as entryComponents either in your app.components.ts @Component({}) decorator or in the app.modules.ts:

import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { NgModule, ApplicationRef } from '@angular/core';
import { CommonModule } from '@angular/common';
import { FormsModule } from '@angular/forms';
import { AppComponent } from './app.component';
import { ChildComponent } from './child/child.component';
import { AnotherChildComponent } from './another-child/another-child.component';

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent,
    ChildComponent,
    AnotherChildComponent
  ],
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    CommonModule,
    FormsModule
  ],
  providers: [],
  entryComponents: [AppComponent, ChildComponent, AnotherChildComponent],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule {

}

import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';

import { NgModule, ApplicationRef } from '@angular/core';

import { CommonModule } from '@angular/common';

import { FormsModule } from '@angular/forms';

import { AppComponent } from './app.component';

import { ChildComponent } from './child/child.component';

import { AnotherChildComponent } from './another-child/another-child.component';

@NgModule({

declarations: [

AppComponent,

ChildComponent,

AnotherChildComponent

imports: [

BrowserModule,

CommonModule,

FormsModule

providers: [],

entryComponents: [AppComponent, ChildComponent, AnotherChildComponent],

bootstrap: [AppComponent]

})

export class AppModule {

}

This should lead to the following result:

In a real world application you probably want to remove the dynamically rendered components at some point. In order to do so it is required to store the return of this.parent.createComponent() in a variable. Lets add another setTimeout and remove the another child component after another 500 milliseconds.

import {Component, ViewChild, ViewContainerRef, ComponentFactoryResolver} from '@angular/core';
import {ChildComponent} from "./child/child.component";
import {AnotherChildComponent} from "./another-child/another-child.component";

@Component({
  selector: 'app-root',
  templateUrl: 'app.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['app.component.css']
})
export class AppComponent {

  title = 'app works!';

  @ViewChild('parent', {read: ViewContainerRef})
  parent: ViewContainerRef;

  constructor(private componentFactoryResolver: ComponentFactoryResolver) {
    const childComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(ChildComponent);
    const anotherChildComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(AnotherChildComponent)
    let anotherChildComponentHolder;

    setTimeout(()=> {
      // at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:
      this.parent.createComponent(childComponent);

      setTimeout(()=> {
        // at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:
        anotherChildComponentHolder = this.parent.createComponent(anotherChildComponent);

        setTimeout(()=> anotherChildComponentHolder.destroy(), 500)
      }, 1000);
    }, 1000);
  }
}

import {Component, ViewChild, ViewContainerRef, ComponentFactoryResolver} from '@angular/core';

import {ChildComponent} from "./child/child.component";

import {AnotherChildComponent} from "./another-child/another-child.component";

@Component({

selector: 'app-root',

templateUrl: 'app.component.html',

styleUrls: ['app.component.css']

})

export class AppComponent {

title = 'app works!';

@ViewChild('parent', {read: ViewContainerRef})

parent: ViewContainerRef;

constructor(private componentFactoryResolver: ComponentFactoryResolver) {

const childComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(ChildComponent);

const anotherChildComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(AnotherChildComponent)

let anotherChildComponentHolder;

setTimeout(()=> {

// at this point we want the "child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

this.parent.createComponent(childComponent);

setTimeout(()=> {

// at this point we want the "another-child" component to be rendered into the app.component:

anotherChildComponentHolder = this.parent.createComponent(anotherChildComponent);

setTimeout(()=> anotherChildComponentHolder.destroy(), 500)

}, 1000);

}

Thats it! If you have any questions feel free to use the comment section.

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37 responses to “Dynamically Render Components with ComponentFactoryResolver in Angular 2”

Gilles P says:

09.09.2016 at 09:28

Thanks for the example, it saved me a lot of investigation time! Do you know if the same approach is also compatible with Angular 2 RC6?

Reply
Abner says:

24.09.2016 at 17:46

Would you be able to provide final release Example? Trying to find a way to load existing components dynamically,, but I cant find.

Reply
Can Kattwinkel says:

26.09.2016 at 08:08

Hello Abner,

the full code is above. Just kickstart a new ng2 project with angular cli and then paste in the snippets from above.

If you receive any error, I’m happy to help.

Reply
Namek says:

26.09.2016 at 17:29

I moved my component creation to service and couldn’t move forward. I didn’t know that entryComponents exists not only in @Component but also in @NgModule. Thanks!

Reply
Damir says:

06.10.2016 at 13:14

Hello,

can this be applied to content gotten from an API call?

I am getting for example this

this.pageContent = ”
Some title
Lorem ipsum text”

right now I am doing in my view:

Obviously “page-component-test” component is not getting transcluded

How do I do that on the fly? (or after I get the response from the API)

Reply
- Peter says:
  
  08.12.2016 at 21:47
  
  I have found this solution to load component into DOM element without using ViewContainer:
  
  import {Component, ComponentFactoryResolver, Injector, ApplicationRef} from ‘@angular/core’;
  import {ChildComponent} from “./child/child.component”;
  
  @Component({
  selector: ‘app-root’,
  template: ”
  })
  export class AppComponent {
  constructor (private componentFactoryResolver: ComponentFactoryResolver, private injector: Injector, private appRef: ApplicationRef) {
  }
  createChildComponent() {
  const childComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(ChildComponent);
  var childComponentRef = childComponent.create(this.injector, null, ‘#parent’);
  (this.appRef)._loadComponent(childComponentRef);
  }
  }
  
  Reply
  - Prateek says:
    
    19.01.2017 at 14:01
    
    ‘_loadComponent’ does not exist on type ‘ApplicationRef’
    
    Reply
    - webdev says:
      
      31.01.2018 at 15:54
      
      Hi Prateek ,
      
      Are you able to get any solution for transcluding the child selectors that are in a string and display them on view? Thanks!!
      
      Reply
Damir says:

06.10.2016 at 13:17

eh, the HTML is not showing in the comment
https://jsfiddle.net/pbre3rbk/ <- here

Reply
- webdev says:
  
  31.01.2018 at 15:46
  
  Hey Damir ,
  
  Are you able to figure out any solution for this ? I’m facing the same issue and need some solution for it.Thanks!!
  
  Reply
Jay says:

21.11.2016 at 19:42

Excellent article, thank you for documenting – I have one question, how would you go about passing inputs into the child components?

Reply
Dave says:

21.12.2016 at 15:44

@Jay: Working from the last example above where you store the return of the CreateComponent method, you can access properties on the child component via the instance property: anotherChildComponentHolder.instance.myProp = “myVal”; You can also call functions on the created component the same way: anotherChildComponentHolder.instance.myFunc(“hello world”);

HTH.

Reply
Renne says:

28.12.2016 at 14:40

Thanks for taking the time to write this out, it helped a lot!

Reply
Marco QU says:

19.01.2017 at 08:29

Is there any way to render components which be received from server?

Reply
- Can Kattwinkel says:
  
  19.01.2017 at 09:07
  
  Probably, take a look at Angular Universal, Ahead of Time Compiling and Lazyloading. But in general you should send data from your server – not components.
  
  Reply
Aman says:

24.01.2017 at 08:11

Is it possible to pass some data like object or array to child component?

Reply
- Can Kattwinkel says:
  
  14.08.2017 at 07:31
  
  Yes for sure.
  
  When you create a component, you get the ComponentRef in return. Calling the “instance” gives you full access to the class of ChildComponent
  
  this.parent.createComponent(childComponent).instance.someMethodOnChildComponent
  
  Reply
Dareq says:

06.02.2017 at 12:47

Hi,

Is it a safe solution ? Is it possible that someone replace the component code loaded dynamically ?

Best regards

Reply
- Can Kattwinkel says:
  
  06.02.2017 at 18:32
  
  Yes this should be safe. Since this approach doesn’t dynamically loads the component. This would be bad practice (at least in my opinion). You should load dynamic data not dynamic templates. The component is served with the client. Also it is listed in the entryComponents. So Ahead of Time Compiling should work out of the box.
  
  Reply
  - Dareq says:
    
    17.02.2017 at 14:51
    
    Thank you. You are right, it is not loaded dynamical, it is render dynamical. Thank you for sharing this solution.
    
    Reply
Bailey says:

15.02.2017 at 16:42

Thank you for your effort.

Reply
Serak Shiferaw says:

14.03.2017 at 12:14

zero help from angular 2 guys, i why need to import anotherchildcomponent() if it is dynamic image using it in an enterprise application where you have thousends of components that load on demand.

from this example i can tell i will write them all inside entrypointcomponent and also have to import thousands of components

Reply
- Can Kattwinkel says:
  
  14.03.2017 at 14:27
  
  Have you considered lazy loading?
  
  Reply
geordie says:

06.04.2017 at 16:40

when inspecting the components, it appears to load them below the div, not within

Reply
- Can Kattwinkel says:
  
  06.04.2017 at 16:50
  
  I’d recommend you to take a look at NgComponentOutlet. Its a new feature of Angular 4.
  
  Reply
Sosolen says:

24.04.2017 at 15:40

Thanks alot!

really clear and helpful !

Reply
Benedikt says:

18.07.2017 at 11:15

Why is the code just running inside the setTimeout() functions? If I try to run this.parent.createComponent() directly under const anotherChildComponent = this.componentFactoryResover.resolveComponentFactory() I get an error “error_handler.js:54 EXCEPTION: Cannot read property ‘createComponent’ of undefined”. How can I run the tasks without timeout functions?

Reply
- Can Kattwinkel says:
  
  14.08.2017 at 07:33
  
  Because the parent component (div#parent) is not yet loaded. This was just an example, if you want to do it on Component initialization then the constructor is the wrong place.
  
  Move your code to the OnInit Lifecycle Hook and it will work.
  
  Reply
Harish says:

12.08.2017 at 10:33

Can we pass parameters to child component?

Reply
Razvan says:

14.03.2018 at 15:58

I am not a fan of the setTimeout(), maybe move the code to ngOnInit()

Reply
Samuel says:

11.08.2018 at 23:04

Just curious….how would we add …. to . I can see in my inspector it adds ….

in the tbody as wanted but the display is incorrect. If i edit the html in the inspect and remove it works great.

How can I correctly insert the …. in my child element in the tbody of the parent component?

Reply
Sammy says:

17.08.2018 at 03:47

Hi,

Thanks very much. It works well. Just one question: In my child component, I have a text box and a button. On click of the button, I want to send the data entered in the texbox and “emit” it back to the parent. For that I tried:

parent:

global_data:any[]=[];

let instance:any=this.stockin_items_containair.createComponent(this.stockItemFormComponent);
instance.instance.eventActionHandler.subscribe(this.emittedNewRowAction)

emittedNewRowAction($event){
//$event contains data sent from child so save it now
console.log($event); // ===================>CORRECT. I see data emitted
this.global_data.push({‘id’:$event}); ==> tihs.global_data is undefined.
}

child:

@Output() eventActionHandler=new EventEmitter();//

sendValueToParent(){

this.eventActionHandler.emit(data);

}

Reply
muneera says:

31.12.2018 at 04:41

How to render child components withoutusing setTimeout function ? May be on a button click

Reply
Troy Harris says:

26.11.2019 at 18:46

Might be good to note an update to the @ViewChild decorator, as after Angular version 8 (optional?) or 9 (required?) there is an additional attribute “static” that needs to be added and set to true or false:

@ViewChild('parent', { read: ViewContainerRef, static: false })

See https://angular.io/guide/static-query-migration

Reply
joker123 says:

14.02.2020 at 16:35

Hello, always i used to check web site posts here early in the dawn, as i love to gain knowledge of more and more.

Reply
Edoardo says:

24.03.2020 at 14:16

Thanks a lot! But what if I want to render also the sub-components of a dynamic component?

Reply
Nath says:

24.12.2020 at 00:19

Hi,

My child element have a property that I’d like to pass when I create it.
I’ve tried multiple things, it didn’t work.

Can you tell me what I should add here ?
Cellcomponent is the child and I would like to add an id inside.

const childComponent = this.componentFactoryResolver.resolveComponentFactory(CellComponent); // here should be added the id this.parent.createComponent(childComponent);

Reply

Dynamically Render Components with ComponentFactoryResolver in Angular 2

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