Understanding the Angular Material Add Command in Angular Projects

Angular Material is a widely-adopted UI component library that is built with Angular. It equips developers with a myriad of pre-built, customizable, and responsive Angular components that follow best practices in web design.

To include Angular Material in your Angular project, the correct command is ng add @angular\/material.

Let's take a closer look at this command:

• ng is the command line interface (CLI) of Angular, providing a wide range of commands to scaffold applications or libraries, generate components and services, serve your app during development, among many other tasks.

• add is a specific Angular CLI command that is used to add support for an external library to your project.

• @angular\/material is the package name of Angular Material in npm (Node Package Manager).

Thus, when you combine these parts into the command ng add @angular\/material, you are instructing Angular CLI to add the Angular Material library support to your Angular project.

It's important to note that the command ng add @angular\/material not only installs Angular Material, but also sets up import statements for the prebuilt themes, typography and animations. That’s why it’s more recommended than just using npm install @angular/material, which just installs the package to your project.

As additional best practices, remember to import only the Angular Material components that you need in each module to maintain optimal project performance. Also, Angular Material is designed to work best with Angular's own Animations module. So, for a fuller and more dynamic user experience, consider using Angular Animations alongside Angular Material.

In conclusion, the command ng add @angular\/material allows you to integrate Angular Material into your Angular project seamlessly and conveniently. By mastering this command, you can easily leverage Angular Material's powerful features to build high-quality user interfaces in your Angular applications.