What is the difference between component and directive?

Basically there are three types of directives in Angular2 according to documentation.

• Component
• Structural directives
• Attribute directives

Component

It is also a type of directive with template,styles and logic part which is most famous type of directive among all in Angular2. In this type of directive you can use other directives whether it is custom or builtin in the @Component annotation like following:

@Component({
    selector: "my-app"
    directives: [custom_directive_here]
})

Use this directive in your view as:

<my-app></my-app>

For the component directive i have found best tutorial here.

Structural directives

Like *ngFor and *ngIf, used to change the DOM layout by adding and removing DOM elements. explained here

Attribute directives

They are used to give custom behavior or style to the existing elements by applying some functions/logic. Like ngStyle is an attribute directive to give style dynamically to the elements. We can create our own directive and use this as attribute of some predefined or custom elements, here is the example of a simple directive:

Firstly we have to import directive from @angular/core

import {Directive, ElementRef, Renderer, Input} from '@angular/core';

@Directive({
  selector: '[Icheck]',
})
export class RadioCheckbox {
   // custom logic here...
}

We can use this in the view as shown below:

<span Icheck>HEllo Directive</span>

For more info you can read the official tutorial here and here

Components have their own view (HTML and styles). Directives are just "behavior" added to existing elements and components.
Component extends Directive.

Because of that there can only be one component on a host element, but multiple directives.

Structural directives are directives applied to <template> elements and used to add/remove content (stamp the template). The * in directive applications like *ngIf causes a <template> tag to be created implicitly.