Upgrade Guardian Frontend from Angular 12 to Angular 18

[Pyatakov]

Problem description

Our frontend is currently running on Angular version 12, which was released in May 2021. As of September 2024, this version is significantly outdated and no longer receives support or security updates from the Angular team. This puts our application at risk of security vulnerabilities and prevents us from utilising the latest features and performance improvements offered by newer Angular versions. Upgrading to the current Angular version will bring several benefits to our project:

• Improved security through the latest updates and patches
• Enhanced performance with the newest rendering engine and optimization techniques
• Access to new features and APIs introduced in recent Angular versions
• Better developer experience with improved CLI and tooling
• Easier future upgrades by staying closer to the latest version
• Continued community support and compatibility with the latest third-party libraries

Requirements

1. Upgrade the frontend application from Angular 12 to Angular 18
2. Update all dependencies to versions compatible with Angular 18
3. Refactor code to address any breaking changes introduced in versions 13 through 18
4. Update build and test configurations to align with Angular 18 standards
5. Ensure all existing features and functionalities remain intact after the upgrade

Definition of done

• The application successfully builds and runs using Angular 18
• All unit tests pass after the upgrade
• End-to-end tests pass, confirming that existing functionality is preserved
• The application performs at least as well as the previous version in terms of speed and resource usage
• Documentation is updated to reflect any changes in build processes or development workflows

Acceptance criteria

1. The package.json file shows Angular core packages at version 18.x.x
2. The application builds without errors
3. All unit and end-to-end tests passed
4. Performance metrics (load time, time to interactive) are equal to or better than the Angular 12 version
5. Code review confirms that best practices for Angular 18 are followed
6. No deprecation warnings are present in the console during development or production builds