How to add bootstrap to an angular-cli project

Question

We want to use bootstrap 4 (4.0.0-alpha.2) in our app generated with angular-cli 1.0.0-beta.5 (w/ node v6.1.0).

After getting bootstrap and its dependencies with npm, our first approach consisted in adding them in angular-cli-build.js:

'bootstrap/dist/**/*.min.+(js|css)',  
'jquery/dist/jquery.min.+(js|map)',  
'tether/dist/**/*.min.+(js|css)',

and import them in our index.html

<script src="vendor/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="vendor/tether/dist/js/tether.min.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="vendor/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css">
<script src="vendor/bootstrap/dist/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

This worked fine with ng serve but as soon as we produced a build with -prod flag all these dependencies disappeared from dist/vendor (surprise !).

How we are intended to handle such scenario (i.e. loading bootstrap scripts) in a project generated with angular-cli ?

We had the following thoughts but we don't really know which way to go...

• use a CDN ? but we would rather serve these files to guarantee that they will be available

• copy dependencies to dist/vendor after our ng build -prod ? But that seems like something angular-cli should provide since it 'takes care' of the build part ?

• adding jquery, bootstrap and tether in src/system-config.ts and somehow pull them into our bundle in main.ts ? But that seemed wrong considering that we are not going to explicitly use them in our application's code (unlike moment.js or something like lodash, for example).

Answer 1

IMPORTANT UPDATE: ng2-bootstrap is now replaced by ngx-bootstrap

ngx-bootstrap supports both Angular 3 and 4.

Update : 1.0.0-beta.11-webpack or above versions

First of all check your angular-cli version with the following command in the terminal:

ng -v

If your angular-cli version is greater than 1.0.0-beta.11-webpack, then you should follow these steps:

1. Install ngx-bootstrap and bootstrap:

   npm install ngx-bootstrap bootstrap --save
   

This line installs Bootstrap 3 nowadays, but can install Bootstrap 4 in the future. Keep in mind ngx-bootstrap supports both versions.

2. Open src/app/app.module.ts and add:

   import { AlertModule } from 'ngx-bootstrap';
   ...
   @NgModule({
   ...
   imports: [AlertModule.forRoot(), ... ],
   ... 
   })
   

3. Open angular-cli.json (for angular6 and later file name changed to angular.json ) and insert a new entry into the styles array:

   "styles": [
   "styles.css",
   "../node_modules/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css"
   ],
   

4. Open src/app/app.component.html and add:

   <alert type="success">hello</alert>
   

1.0.0-beta.10 or below versions:

And, if your angular-cli version is 1.0.0-beta.10 or below, then you can use below steps.

First, go to the project directory and type:

npm install ngx-bootstrap --save

Then, open your angular-cli-build.js and add this line:

vendorNpmFiles: [
   ...
   'ngx-bootstrap/**/*.js',
   ...
]

Now, open your src/system-config.ts then write:

const map:any = {
   ...
   'ngx-bootstrap': 'vendor/ngx-bootstrap',
   ...
}

...and:

const packages: any = {
  'ngx-bootstrap': {
    format: 'cjs',
    defaultExtension: 'js',
    main: 'ngx-bootstrap.js'
  }
};