Angular-ui.router: Update URL without view refresh

Question

I have an Angular SPA that presents a variety of recommendation lists, and a Google Map of locations, based on different cuts of some restaurant data (see m.amsterdamfoodie.nl). I want each of these lists to have their own URL. In order for Google to crawl the different lists I use <a> tags for the offcanvas navigation.

At present the <a> tag causes a view refresh, which is very noticeable with the map.

• I can prevent this using ng-click and $event.preventDefault() (see code snippets below), but then I need to implement a means of updating the browser URL.
• But in trying Angular's $state or the browser's history.pushstate, I end up triggering state changes and the view refresh...!

My question is therefore how can I update a model and the URL, but without refreshing the view? (See also Angular/UI-Router - How Can I Update The URL Without Refreshing Everything?)

I have experimented with a lot of approaches and currently have this html

<a href="criteria/price/1" class="btn btn-default" ng-click="main.action($event)">Budget</a>

In the controller:

this.action = ($event) ->
    $event.preventDefault()
    params = $event.target.href.match(/criteria\/(.*)\/(.*)$/)

    # seems to cause a view refresh
    # history.pushState({}, "page 2", "criteria/"+params[1]+"/"+params[2]);

    # seems to cause a view refresh
    # $state.transitionTo 'criteria', {criteria:params[1], q:params[2]}, {inherit:false}

    updateModel(...)

And, what is I think is happening is that I am triggering the $stateProvider code:

angular.module 'afmnewApp'
.config ($stateProvider) ->
  $stateProvider
  .state 'main',
    url: '/'
    templateUrl: 'app/main/main.html'
    controller: 'MainCtrl'
    controllerAs: 'main'
  .state 'criteria',
    url: '/criteria/:criteria/:q'
    templateUrl: 'app/main/main.html'
    controller: 'MainCtrl'
    controllerAs: 'main'

One possible clue is that with the code below if I load e.g. http://afmnew.herokuapp.com/criteria/cuisine/italian then the view refreshes as you navigate, whereas if I load http://afmnew.herokuapp.com/ there are no refreshes, but no URL updates instead. I don't understand why that is happening at all.

Answer 1

This is an example of the way to go if I understand correctly:

$state.go('my.state', {id:data.id}, {notify:false, reload:false});
//And to remove the id from the url:
$state.go('my.state', {id:undefined}, {notify:false, reload:false});

From user l-liava-l in the issue https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router/issues/64

You can check the $state API here: http://angular-ui.github.io/ui-router/site/#/api/ui.router.state.$state

Answer 2

Based on our previous discussions, I want to give you some idea, how to use UI-Router here. I believe, I understand your challenge properly... There is a working example. If this not fully suites, please take it as some inspiration

DISCLAIMER: With a plunker, I was not able to achieve this: http://m.amsterdamfoodie.nl/, but the principle should be in that example similar

So, there is a state definition (we have only two states)

  $stateProvider
    .state('main', {
        url: '/',
        views: {
          '@' : {
            templateUrl: 'tpl.layout.html',
            controller: 'MainCtrl',
          },
          'right@main' : { templateUrl: 'tpl.right.html',}, 
          'map@main' : {
            templateUrl: 'tpl.map.html',
            controller: 'MapCtrl',
          },
          'list@main' : {
            templateUrl: 'tpl.list.html',
            controller: 'ListCtrl',
          },
        },
      })
    .state('main.criteria', {
        url: '^/criteria/:criteria/:value',
        views: {
          'map' : {
            templateUrl: 'tpl.map.html',
            controller: 'MapCtrl',
          },
          'list' : {
            templateUrl: 'tpl.list.html',
            controller: 'ListCtrl',
          },
        },
      })
}];

This would be our main tpl.layout.html

<div>

  <section class="main">

    <section class="map">
      <div ui-view="map"></div>
    </section>

    <section class="list">
      <div ui-view="list"></div>
    </section>

  </section>

  <section class="right">
    <div ui-view="right"></div>
  </section>

</div>

As we can see, the main state does target these nested views of the main state: 'viewName@main', e.g. 'right@main'

Also the subview, main.criteria does inject into layout views.

Its url starts with a sign ^ (url : '^/criteria/:criteria/:value'), which allows to have / slash for main and not doubled slash for child

And also there are controllers, they are here a bit naive, but they should show, that on the background could be real data load (based on criteria).

The most important stuff here is, that the PARENT MainCtrl creates the $scope.Model = {}. This property will be (thanks to inheritance) shared among parent and children. That's why this all will work:

app.controller('MainCtrl', function($scope)
{
  $scope.Model = {};
  $scope.Model.data = ['Rest1', 'Rest2', 'Rest3', 'Rest4', 'Rest5'];  
  $scope.Model.randOrd = function (){ return (Math.round(Math.random())-0.5); };
})
.controller('ListCtrl', function($scope, $stateParams)
{
  $scope.Model.list = []
  $scope.Model.data
    .sort( $scope.Model.randOrd )
    .forEach(function(i) {$scope.Model.list.push(i + " - " + $stateParams.value || "root")})
  $scope.Model.selected = $scope.Model.list[0];
  $scope.Model.select = function(index){
    $scope.Model.selected = $scope.Model.list[index];  
  }
})

This should get some idea how we can use the features provided for us by UI-Router:

• Absolute Routes (^)
• Scope Inheritance by View Hierarchy Only
• View Names - Relative vs. Absolute Names

Check the above extract here, in the working example

Extend: new plunker here

If we do not want to have map view to be recreated, we can just omit that form the child state def:

.state('main.criteria', {
    url: '^/criteria/:criteria/:value',
    views: {
      // 'map' : {
      //  templateUrl: 'tpl.map.html',
      //  controller: 'MapCtrl',
      //},
      'list' : {
        templateUrl: 'tpl.list.html',
        controller: 'ListCtrl',
      },
    },
  })

Now our map VIEW will be just recieving changes in the model (could be watched) but view and controller won't be rerendered

ALSO, there is another plunker http://plnkr.co/edit/y0GzHv?p=preview which uses the controllerAs

.state('main', {
    url: '/',
    views: {
      '@' : {
        templateUrl: 'tpl.layout.html',
        controller: 'MainCtrl',
        controllerAs: 'main',        // here
      },
      ...
    },
  })
.state('main.criteria', {
    url: '^/criteria/:criteria/:value',
    views: {
      'list' : {
        templateUrl: 'tpl.list.html',
        controller: 'ListCtrl',
        controllerAs: 'list',      // here
      },
    },
  })

and that could be used like this:

<h4>{{main.hello()}}</h4>
<h4>{{list.hello()}}</h4>

The last plunker is here

Answer 3

you can use scope inheritance to update url without refreshing view

$stateProvider
            .state('itemList', {
                url: '/itemlist',
                templateUrl: 'Scripts/app/item/ItemListTemplate.html',
                controller: 'ItemListController as itemList'
                //abstract: true //abstract maybe?
            }).state('itemList.itemDetail', {
                url: '/:itemName/:itemID',
                templateUrl: 'Scripts/app/item/ItemDetailTemplate.html',
                controller: 'ItemDetailController as itemDetail',
                resolve: {
                    'CurrentItemID': ['$stateParams',function ($stateParams) {
                        return $stateParams['itemID'];
                    }]
                }
            })

if child view is inside parent view both controllers share same scope. so you can place a dummy (or neccessary) ui-view inside parent view which will be populated by child view.

and insert a

$scope.loadChildData = function(itemID){..blabla..};

function in parent controller which will be called by child controller on controller load. so when a user clicks

<a ui-sref="childState({itemID: 12})">bla</a> 

only child controller and child view will be refreshed. then you can call parent scope function with necessary parameters.