NG Container Hack for Structural Directives

In Angular there are two quirks when it comes to structural directives:

<div *ngIf="someVariable">
  <p>This is text.</p>
  <p>This is more text.</p>
</div>

<ul>
  <li *ngFor="let box of boxes" *ngIf="box.item === 'food'">{{ box.name }}</li>
</ul>

The quirk probably naturally arises because for loops and if statements weren't meant to be used within a template. So if we think about it that way, where we can use some sort of Angular functionality to bring it out of the DOM it brings us to ng-container.

Understanding ng-container

In the Angular documentation, ng ng-container is specified as a way to group elements without introducing a new html element.

Some of the examples mentioned include a <span> element that might introduce some accidental styling, or attempting to put a <span> inside of a select element. ng-container will allow for to side step those issues, by not introducing a new element to the actual DOM. We can use the ng-container to solve the quirks we mentioned earlier:

  to Implement Structural Directive"}
<ng-container *ngIf="someVariable">
  <p>The show goes on.</p>
  <p>and on and on and on.</p>
</ng-container>

Here, by introducing an ng-container, we no longer have to introduce a new div, if we want the content to show conditionally. Likewise, to solve the issue we had before of being able to use two structural directives, we can do the following:

<ul>
  <ng-container *ngFor="let box of boxes">
    <ng-container *ngIf="box.item === 'food'">
      <li>{{ box.name }}</li>
    </ng-container>
  </ng-container>
</ul>  

We could technically apply the *ngIf on the li element itself, for consistency sake. If I had a team member that preferred otherwise, I would be more than happy with that, just my preference.

Thank you to Austin Spivey for being the person where I saw this approach from.