Routing and navigation in Angular 2

Question

I am going through the tutorials for Angular 2 and have been able to get a simple application up and running. Now, I am moving on to the routing and navigation part found here https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/guide/router.html, but something isn't working for me.

I went to the live example in Plunker and downloaded the code from there. I then setup a solution in Visual Studio 2015 and plugged in all of the code from the Plunker download. The application works perfectly except for one thing, the navigation doesn't seem to work as the documentation would seem to indicate.

I start debugging the application in Visual Studio using IIS Express and Chrome browser. The main page loads correctly and I can click on the links for Crisis Center and Heroes. When I click the links, the component views correctly load and everything looks perfect.

Now, if I try to navigate by simply typing in the URL, the component views don't load and all I have is a blank page.

For example, I start debugging the application in Visual Studio and the Chrome Browser opens with the URL http://localhost:56074/. The main page is loaded correctly with the "Component Router" header and the two links for "Crisis Center" and "Heroes". Now, if I simply go to the address bar and add "/crisis-center" to the end of the URL so it looks like http://localhost:56074/crisis-center, I get a blank page. The Chrome console shows the following error:

GET http://localhost:56074/crisis-center 404 (Not Found) Navigated to http://localhost:56074/crisis-center

and the Network trace clearly shows a 404 for crisis-center. In fact, if I use the navigation link on the main page for Crisis Center and click on it to show the crisis center component view, and then simply hit the refresh button to refresh the page while at the crisis center view, the same result happens.

Is this a Visual Studio issue? IIS Express? Other ideas?

We are a .Net development shop and our primary development environment is Visual Studio. If this is an issue with developing an Angular 2 application in Visual Studio using IIS Express, this may be a show stopper.

If anyone wants to try the same thing I can zip up my VS solution and share.

Anyone tried an Angular 2 application in Visual Studio using IIS Express that can maybe tell me what I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

Angular 2 by default uses HTML5 routing, you either have to map all server requests to index.html by adding the following to web.config

<rewrite>
    <rules>
        <rule name="redirect all" stopProcessing="true">
            <match url="^(.*)$" ignoreCase="false" />
            <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
                <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" pattern="" ignoreCase="false" />
            </conditions>
            <action type="Rewrite" url="PATH TO INDEX.HTML" appendQueryString="true" />
        </rule>
    </rules>
</rewrite>

or implement the HashLocationStrategy, as described in angular docs here

provide(LocationStrategy, {useClass: HashLocationStrategy})

Answer 2

In addition to @stasivash answer: If you have trouble making ajax requests to a certain path in your project, such as YOUR-DOMAIN/api/..., I suggest adding the following condition:

<add input="{REQUEST_URI}" negate="true" pattern="^\/api\/.*$" ignoreCase="true" />

resulting in:

<rewrite>
  <rules>
      <rule name="redirect all" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="^(.*)$" ignoreCase="false" />
          <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
              <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" pattern="" ignoreCase="false" />
              <add input="{REQUEST_URI}" negate="true" pattern="^\/api\/.*$" ignoreCase="true" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Rewrite" url="/index.html" appendQueryString="true" />
      </rule>
  </rules>
</rewrite>

Answer 3

For this issue, you need to use PathLocationStrategy or HashLocationStrategy for your application. It's available in the 'angular2/router'.

Example for using HashLocationStrategy:

boot.ts

bootstrap(AppCmp, [
       ROUTER_PROVIDERS,
       provide(LocationStrategy, {useClass: HashLocationStrategy})
   ]);

and in your main component,

class AppCmp {
          constructor(location: Location) {
          location.go(location.path());
       }

The location.path() dynamically gives the path for the page to be loaded.