Angular 2 Remove Hash (#) from the URL

Question

I am trying to remove the # sign from the url in Angular 2 but I couldn't find any good explanation about how to remove it without generate any problem.

I remember on AngularJS 1 it was easier adding $locationProvider.html5Mode(true);

Also I would appreciate if you can tell me if this is a good practice (removing #) or could affect the SEO for the application (or improve it).

PS: I am using Angular 2 with typescript

Answer 1

As @Volodymyr Bilyachat pointed out, PathLocationStrategy is a default location strategy in Angular2, and if the # is present in the url, it must have been that's overridden somewhere.

Beside the module providers, check your module imports, it can also be overridden by providing the { useHash: true } as the second argument of the RouterModule.forRoot:

imports: [     ...     RouterModule.forRoot(routes, { useHash: true })  // remove second argument ] 

Also note that when using PathLocationStrategy you need to configure your web server to serve index.html (app's entry point) for all requested locations.

Here are configuration examples for some of the popular web servers: https://angular.io/guide/deployment#fallback-configuration-examples