What is the difference between createEmbeddedView and createComponent?

See this workshop on DOM manipulation or read Working with DOM in Angular: unexpected consequences and optimization techniques where I explain the difference with examples.

These both methods are used to dynamically add content to the component view (DOM). This content can be either a template or a component based. In Angular we usually manipulate the DOM using ViewContainerRef. And both these methods are available on it:

class ViewContainerRef {
    ...
    createEmbeddedView<C>(templateRef: TemplateRef<C>, context?: C, index?: number): EmbeddedViewRef<C>
    createComponent<C>(componentFactory: ComponentFactory<C>, index?: number, injector?: Injector, projectableNodes?: any[][], ngModule?: NgModuleRef<any>): ComponentRef<C>
}

To learn more about manipulating the DOM read Exploring Angular DOM manipulation techniques using ViewContainerRef.

createEmbeddedView

It’s used to create a view using TemplateRef. TemplateRef is created by Angular compiler when it encounters ng-template tag in your component html.
The view created using this method is called an embedded view.

import { VERSION, Component, ViewChild, TemplateRef, ViewContainerRef } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
  selector: 'my-app',
  template: `
      <ng-container #vc></ng-container>
      <ng-template #tpl>
          <h1>Hello, {{name}}</h1>
      </ng-template>
  `,
  styles: ['']
})
export class AppComponent {
  name = `Angular! v${VERSION.full}`;

  @ViewChild('tpl', {read: TemplateRef}) tpl: TemplateRef<any>;
  @ViewChild('vc', {read: ViewContainerRef}) vc: ViewContainerRef;

  ngOnInit() {
    this.vc.createEmbeddedView(this.tpl);
  }
}

Stackblitz demo

This approach is used by all structural directives like *ngIf and *ngFor because they are all wrap a ng-template. For example, for *ngIf the code:

<div *ngIf="data">{{name}}</div>

is transformed into

<ng-template ngIf="data">
   <div>{{name}}</div>

And the ngIf directive uses createEmbeddedView internally:

@Directive({selector: '[ngIf]'})
export class NgIf {
    private _updateView() {
       ...
       if (this._thenTemplateRef) {
           this._thenViewRef =
               this._viewContainer.createEmbeddedView(this._thenTemplateRef, this._context);

createComponent

It’s used to create a view using ComponentFactory. It’s created by Angular compiler when you specify a component in the bootstrap property of the module and so the compiler generates a factory for it. The view created using this method is called a hostview.

import { Component, ViewContainerRef, ComponentFactoryResolver, NgZone, VERSION, ViewChild } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
  selector: 'hello',
  template: `<h1>Hello Component!</h1>`,
  styles: [``]
})
export class HelloComponent  {}

@Component({
  selector: 'my-app',
  template: `
      <ng-container #vc></ng-container>
  `,
  styles: ['']
})
export class AppComponent {

  @ViewChild('vc', {read:ViewContainerRef}) vc: ViewContainerRef;

  constructor(private resolver: ComponentFactoryResolver) {}

  ngOnInit() {
    const factory = this.resolver.resolveComponentFactory(HelloComponent);
    this.vc.createComponent(factory);
  }
}

Stackblitz demo.

To learn more about the difference between a host view and an embedded view read What is the difference between a view, a host view and an embedded view