Best practices for integrating Angular 2 with existing PHP MVC architecture

Backend
1

I’m working on a large PHP MVC application that currently uses jQuery for handling click events and showing modal dialogs. I want to upgrade to Angular 2 to keep up with modern frontend development, but I’m running into some challenges.

The biggest issue is that Angular 2 removed controllers, which makes integration more complex. Most of my HTML gets rendered on the PHP backend side, and I mainly need JavaScript for basic interactions like button clicks and modal windows.

Here’s my concern: let’s say I have a blog page that displays multiple posts. Right now, PHP handles everything - it gets the data from MySQL, processes each post, and renders the complete HTML. If I switch to Angular 2 components, wouldn’t that mean making tons of AJAX calls for every single post? That seems inefficient.

I don’t think creating tiny Angular templates just to get click handlers on buttons is the right approach either. What’s the recommended way to make Angular 2 work smoothly alongside PHP MVC without completely restructuring my backend architecture?

2

honestly you might wanna consider keeping jquery for now and just adding angular selectively. i did something similar - used angular just for complex forms while php still handles most rendering. way less headache than full migration and you avoid those ajax performance issues you mentioned.

3

interesting problem! what about a hybrid setup? keep php for static stuff but drop angular components just where you need interactivity - like wrapping your modals in angular while leaving everything else alone. how big is this app anyway? what’s your typical user load?

4

Try Angular Universal for server-side rendering - it’s a solid middle ground. I dealt with something similar on a legacy PHP app. Instead of converting everything, I only added Angular components where they actually made sense - real-time comments, dynamic filters, that kind of stuff. Treat Angular like an enhancement layer, not a full replacement. Let PHP keep doing what it’s good at (data processing, initial renders) and use Angular for specific user interactions. This way you keep the performance benefits of server-side rendering while slowly modernizing your frontend. Breaking it down into small, functional pieces made the whole migration way more manageable than trying to convert everything at once.