Is there a way to name a route in Angular 7?

Question

I was wondering if there is a way to name my routes in Angular7 so I could just call [routerLink]="myRouteName" instead of [routerLink]="/my/route/path".

If so, how can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Considering you want to configure the routes names while you are creating the route configuration.

Lets leverage routes' data property to add names to routes. (A small extra data in every route should not affect any performance).

But first, let's create a class which conatains a static property for holding route names and their actual paths.

export class RouteNames {
  public static routeNamesObject = {}
}

Now in your routing component where you have defined the routes, let's have it like:

const routes: Routes = [
  {path: "hello/:id", component: HelloComponent, data: {routeName: "Hello1"}},
  {path: "hello", component: HelloComponent, data: { routeName: "Hello2" }}
]

Just after this variable initialization set the RouteNames class's static prop

routes.forEach((eachRoute) => {
  RouteNames.routeNamesObject[eachRoute.data.routeName] = eachRoute.path;    // now all route paths are added to this prop
})

Make a public variable in your component to access the static class

Like in app.component.ts: (You don't need injection)

public routeNames = RouteNames;

Then the app.component.html will be something like:

<button [routerLink]="routeNames.routeNamesObject['Hello2']">Click to Navigate to Hello</button>

Answer 2

<a [routerLink]="routerLinkVariable"></a>

So this variable (routerLinkVariable) could be defined inside your class and it should have a value like below

export class myComponent {

     public routerLinkVariable = "/my/route/path"; // the value of the variable is string!
}

Answer 3

I managed to do this like this (bonus if someone can tell me how to remove the Array loop):

custom-route.interface.ts -- this is to add name to our route object

export interface ICustomRoute extends Route {

  name?: string;

}

In routing.module.ts (or wherever you have stored your routes):

const routes: ICustomRoute[] = [
  { path: 'some/random/page1', component: TestComponent, name: 'page1'  },
  { path: 'some/random/page2', component: Test2Component, name: 'page2'  },
  { path: 'page3', component: Test3Component, name: 'page3'  },
];

Now the name is being passed into your routing module so now you have to catch the name and handle it. You can do this in a number of ways, I ended up using a directive (I saw @Safron mentioned a pipe as well)

named-routerlink.directive.ts

@Directive({
  selector: 'a[namedRouterLink]'
})
export class NamedRouterLinkDirective extends RouterLinkWithHref{
  @Input('namedRouterLink')

  set namedRouterLink(val: any) {
    const selectedRoute = this.myRoute.config.filter( x => x['name'] == val)[0];
    this.routerLink = "/" + selectedRoute['path']
  };

  constructor(router: Router, route: ActivatedRoute, locationStrategy: LocationStrategy, private myRoute: Router){
    super(router, route, locationStrategy)
  }

}

And then obviously use like this:

 <a namedRouterLink="page1">Page 1</a>

Pipe Version:

@Pipe({name: 'getRoute' })
export class RoutePipe implements PipeTransform {

  constructor(private router: Router){}

  transform(routeName: string): string {
    const selectedRoute = this.router.config.filter( x => x['name'] == routeName)[0];
    return "/" + selectedRoute['path']
  }

}

Pipe Example:

 <a namedRouterLink="{{ 'page1' | getRoute }}">Page 1</a>