Anatomy of a component

Every component must have:

• A TypeScript class with behaviors such as handling user input and fetching data from a server
• An HTML template that controls what renders into the DOM
• A CSS selector that defines how the component is used in HTML

You provide Angular-specific information for a component by adding a @Component decorator on top of the TypeScript class:

      
@Component({  selector: 'profile-photo',  template: `<img src="profile-photo.jpg" alt="Your profile photo">`,})export class ProfilePhoto { }
    

For full details on writing Angular templates, including data binding, event handling, and control flow, see the Templates guide.

The object passed to the @Component decorator is called the component's metadata. This includes the selector, template, and other properties described throughout this guide.

Components can optionally include a list of CSS styles that apply to that component's DOM:

      
@Component({  selector: 'profile-photo',  template: `<img src="profile-photo.jpg" alt="Your profile photo">`,  styles: `img { border-radius: 50%; }`,})export class ProfilePhoto { }
    

By default, a component's styles only affect elements defined in that component's template. See Styling Components for details on Angular's approach to styling.

You can alternatively choose to write your template and styles in separate files:

      
@Component({  selector: 'profile-photo',  templateUrl: 'profile-photo.html',  styleUrl: 'profile-photo.css',})export class ProfilePhoto { }
    

This can help separate the concerns of presentation from behavior in your project. You can choose one approach for your entire project, or you decide which to use for each component.

Both templateUrl and styleUrl are relative to the directory in which the component resides.

Using components

Imports in the @Component decorator

To use a component, directive, or pipe, you must add it to the imports array in the @Component decorator:

      
import {ProfilePhoto} from './profile-photo';@Component({  // Import the `ProfilePhoto` component in  // order to use it in this component's template.  imports: [ProfilePhoto],  /* ... */})export class UserProfile { }
    

By default, Angular components are standalone, meaning that you can directly add them to the imports array of other components. Components created with an earlier version of Angular may instead specify standalone: false in their @Component decorator. For these components, you instead import the NgModule in which the component is defined. See the full NgModule guide for details.

Important: In Angular versions before 19.0.0, the standalone option defaults to false.

Showing components in a template

Every component defines a CSS selector:

      
@Component({  selector: 'profile-photo',  ...})export class ProfilePhoto { }
    

See Component Selectors for details about which types of selectors Angular supports and guidance on choosing a selector.

You show a component by creating a matching HTML element in the template of other components:

      
@Component({  selector: 'profile-photo',})export class ProfilePhoto { }@Component({  imports: [ProfilePhoto],  template: `<profile-photo />`})export class UserProfile { }
    

Angular creates an instance of the component for every matching HTML element it encounters. The DOM element that matches a component's selector is referred to as that component's host element. The contents of a component's template are rendered inside its host element.

The DOM rendered by a component, corresponding to that component's template, is called that component's view.

In composing components in this way, you can think of your Angular application as a tree of components.

This tree structure is important to understanding several other Angular concepts, including dependency injection and child queries.