$route property not available on next and current parameters in $routeChangeStart for default route

[maciejblinkbox]

In $routeChangeStart event handler current and next parameters don't have the $route property when the route is default route.

I have put toghether a plnkr that shows the problem:
http://run.plnkr.co/nQePdzxAemAZ5Q2T/

Here are example routes:
app.config(function($routeProvider){
$routeProvider.when('/page/:id', {templateUrl: 'Main.html' , controller: 'MainCtrl'});
$routeProvider.otherwise({templateUrl: 'Main.html' , controller: 'MainCtrl'});
});

Expected behaviour: $route should be present on current and next parameters regardles whether a default route is hit or regular route.

[latentflip]

@maciejblinkbox that plnkr link is saying "Not Found" for me, any chance of reposting it to a new one, or opening it up if you have it made private?

[maciejblinkbox]

Appologies for that. This is the first time I used plunker.
I 'forked to public plunk' now, 'Show off your work' url is: http://plnkr.co/edit/kHfGG2
Does that work for you?
Thanks

[latentflip]

I think this is an issue in your code. In your plnkr, you are trying to access next.$route and current.$route. But next and current are the routes themselves.

If you look at this updated plnkr: http://plnkr.co/edit/RjNJbC (preview here: http://embed.plnkr.co/RjNJbC/preview) you will see that everything works as you would expect.

There will be one time where current is not set and that is on the first routing on page load, as there is not current route being changed, only the next (first) one.

Does that make sense?

[maciejblinkbox]

Interesting.

$route object on next and current objects has controller, reloadOnSearch and templateUrl properties.
next and current objects have params, pathParams, scope and $route.
So they are not the same.

In the plunker the app opens default route on the initial load.
In $routeChangeStart I get:
current - undefined - correct
next - defined (default route) and doesn't have $route which I believe is incorrect.

When I go to any other route, let's say I click on the "Page 1" link in $routeChangeStart I get:
current - defined (default route) and doesn't have $route which I believe is incorrect.
next - defined (page route) and it does have the $route property which is correct

So current and next objects in $routeChangeStart:

• do have the $route property if we are on a regular route
• don't have the $route property if we are on a default route

This behaviour is inconsistent.
Expected behaviour: $route property is always present.

[latentflip]

Okay, apologies, my bad. I see what you are saying now.

Yes this does indeed look to be a bug. Although as far as I can tell there are no tests on the $routeProvider that check if $route will be set ever.

This seems to boil down to this line: https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/src/ng/route.js#L469 $route is only set when a route is matched, not when it falls back to the default route.

Changing the parseRoute function to something like this fixes the issue, but since there are no tests at all for the $route stuff they will probably have to be written before this can get merged in.

@maciejblinkbox feel free to turn this code into a tested pull request if you like :)

    /**
     * @returns the current active route, by matching it against the URL
     */
    function parseRoute() {
      // Match a route
      var params, match;
      forEach(routes, function(route, path) {
        if (!match && (params = switchRouteMatcher($location.path(), path))) {
          match = inherit(route, {
            params: extend({}, $location.search(), params),
            pathParams: params});
          match.$route = route;
        }
      });
      // No route matched; fallback to "otherwise" route
      if (!match && routes[null]) {
        match = inherit(routes[null], {params: {}, pathParams:{}});
        match.$route = routes[null];
      }
      return match;
    }

[IgorMinar]

nextRoute.$route is not meant to be public api use nextRoute instead directly which inherits from the currently matched route definition.

I added tests just to be sure that we do the right thing and renamed nextRoute.$route to nextRoute.$$route to make it clear that this is a private property.

[IgorMinar]

we should reimplement the matching so that event $$route is not exposed. when we do it we'll break you. don't depend on it. there shouldn't be a reason for you to do so.