Angular UI-Router modal removes parent state

Question

I'm working on an angular app that has ui-router module. When entering a certain state of the router, I show a modal dialog, which then replaces my parent view. I would like to keep the parent view and show the modal as overlay. Is there a way to do it with ui-router?

To give an example:

$stateProvider.state("clients.list", {
    url: "/list",
    templateUrl: "app/client/templates/client-list.tpl.html",
    controller: moduleNamespace.clientListController,
    resolve: {
        clients: function (ClientService) {
            return ClientService.all();
        }
    }
})
// This will replace "clients.list", and show the modal
// I want to just overlay the modal on top of "clients.list"
.state("clients.add", {
    url: "/add",
    onEnter: function ($stateParams, $rootScope, $state, ngDialog) {
        ngDialog.open({
            controller: moduleNamespace.clientAddController,
            template: "app/client/templates/client-add.tpl.html"
        });

        $rootScope.$on("ngDialog.closed", function (e, $dialog) 
              if ($state.current.name !== "clients.list") $state.transitionTo("clients.list");
        });
    }
})

Thanks

Answer 1

I think the proper solution would be something like:

$stateProvider.state("clients.list", {
    url: "/list",
    templateUrl: "app/client/templates/client-list.tpl.html",
    controller: moduleNamespace.clientListController,
    resolve: {
       clients: function (ClientService) {
          return ClientService.all();
      }
    }
})
.state("clients.list.add", {
    url: "^/add",
})

Important things are I made /add absolute by adding a ^. Most people would have just done /list/add because the default behavior of nested state is to add them together...the ^ bypasses this. You also would need to on state load style this thing so its a "modal" and is on top of other content.

And then inside of clients.list state you would need to update /client-list.tpl.html to have an ng-view that would style itself on top of the parent view.

I can create a plunkr if need be, but if I do that I am basically implementing everything for you.