angular-route-segment

An extension for AngularJS $route service which supports tree-like nested views and routes hierarchy, and advanced loading flow handling.

Getting Started

Example site is located here:

DEMO SITE

The sources of this example can be found in the folder /example.

You can install the library via Bower:

bower install angular-route-segment

Tested with AngularJS 1.1.5 and 1.2.0rc1 (you must include ngRoute module in 1.2.x!).

Overview

This library is intended to provide the lacking functionality of nested routing to AngularJS applications. It is widely known, there are no ways to keep the page state unchanged when only a part of it should be updated via routing mechanics - the $route service re-creates the whole scope after a route is changed, losing its state completely. route-segment gives you a way to handle this.

The library provides two pieces of code: $routeSegment service and app-view-segment directive. Both are placed in their own modules which you must include as dependencies in your app module:

var app = angular.module('app', ['ngRoute', 'route-segment', 'view-segment']);

$routeSegment is meant to be used instead of built-in Angular $route service. Its provider exposes configuration methods which can be used to traverse the tree of route segments and setup it properly.

app.config(function ($routeSegmentProvider) {

$routeSegmentProvider.

    when('/section1',          's1.home').
    when('/section1/prefs',    's1.prefs').
    when('/section1/:id',      's1.itemInfo.overview').
    when('/section1/:id/edit', 's1.itemInfo.edit').
    when('/section2',          's2').

    segment('s1', {
        templateUrl: 'templates/section1.html',
        controller: MainCtrl}).

    within().

        segment('home', {
            templateUrl: 'templates/section1/home.html'}).

        segment('itemInfo', {
            templateUrl: 'templates/section1/item.html',
            controller: Section1ItemCtrl,
            dependencies: ['id']}).

        within().
	    
            segment('overview', {
                templateUrl: 'templates/section1/item/overview.html'}).

            segment('edit', {
                 templateUrl: 'templates/section1/item/edit.html'}).

            up().

        segment('prefs', {
            templateUrl: 'templates/section1/prefs.html'}).

        up().

    segment('s2', {
        templateUrl: 'templates/section2.html',
        controller: MainCtrl});

Alternatively, you can use this syntax instead of traversing:

$routeSegmentProvider.segment('s1', {
    templateUrl: 'templates/section1.html',
    controller: MainCtrl});

$routeSegmentProvider.within('s1').segment('home', {
    templateUrl: 'templates/section1/home.html'});

$routeSegmentProvider.within('s1').segment('itemInfo', {
    templateUrl: 'templates/section1/item.html',
    controller: Section1ItemCtrl,
    dependencies: ['id']});
    
$routeSegmentProvider.within('s1').within('itemInfo').segment('overview', {
    templateUrl: 'templates/section1/item/overview.html'});

Then, any app-view-segment tags (which are similar to built-in ng-view) in the DOM will be populated with the corresponding route segment item. You must provide a segment index as an argument to this directive to make it aware about which segment level in the tree it should be linked to.

index.html:

<ul>
    <li ng-class="{active: $routeSegment.startsWith('s1')}">
        <a href="/section1">Section 1</a>
    </li>
    <li ng-class="{active: $routeSegment.startsWith('s2')}">
        <a href="/section2">Section 2</a>
    </li>
</ul>
<div id="contents" app-view-segment="0"></div>

section1.html: (it will be loaded to div#contents in index.html)

<h4>Section 1</h4>
Section 1 contents.
<div app-view-segment="1"></div>

...etc. You can reach any nesting level here. Every view will be handled independently, keeping the state of top-level views.

Difference from UI-Router

While it seems that this library has very similar goal to what UI-Router provides, there are some important differences between their implementations, though.

UI-Router implements its own URL routing mechanics with its own "state" concept on top of it. angular-route-segment doesn't try to replace something in AngularJS. It is based on built-in $route engine, so that it tries to extend it rather than to replace. $routeSegmentProvider.when method is just a shorthand to $routeProvider.when with the simplified syntax. Inner segment-handling logic is built on top of events propagated by $route service, with internal usage of some route params from it.

Such approach makes it possible to accomplish the desired nested routing task in more simpler manner, which produces less code, less complexity and potential bugs, provides better cohesion with Angular core engine and is easier to understand, use and debug.

Documentation

Please note that you may read the test specs to learn features usage.

$routeSegmentProvider properties

options

A hash object which can be used to set up the service on config stage:

• options.autoLoadTemplates

  When true, it will resolve templateUrl automatically via $http service and put its contents into template.

• options.strictMode

  When true, all attempts to call within method on non-existing segments will throw an error (you would usually want this behavior in production). When false, it will transparently create new empty segment (can be useful in isolated tests).

when(route, name)

The shorthand for $routeProvider.when() method with specified fully qualified route name.

• route

  Route URL, e.g. /foo/bar

• name

  Fully qualified route name, e.g. foo.bar

segment(name, params)

Adds new segment at current pointer level.

• name

  Name of a segment item, e.g. bar

• params

  Segment's parameters hash. The following params are supported:

  • template provides HTML for the given segment view;
  • templateUrl is a template which should be fetched from the network via this URL;
  • controller is attached to the given segment view when compiled and linked, this can be any controller definition AngularJS supports;
  • controllerAs is a controller alias name, if present the controller will be published to scope under the controllerAs name;
  • dependencies is an array of route param names which are forcing the view to recreate when changed;
  • watcher is a $watch-function for recreating the view when its returning value is changed;
  • resolve is a hash of functions or injectable names which should be resolved prior to instantiating the template and the controller;
  • untilResolved is the alternate set of params (e.g. template and controller) which should be used before resolving is completed;
  • resolveFailed is the alternate set of params which should be used if resolving failed.

within(childName)

Traverses into an existing segment, so that subsequent segment calls will add new segments as its descendants.

• childName

  An existing segment's name. An optional argument. If undefined, then the last added segment is selected.

up()

Traverses up in the tree.

root()

Traverses to the root.

$routeSegment properties

name

Fully qualified name of current active route.

$routeParams

A copy of $routeParams in its state of the latest successful segment update. It may be not equal to $routeParams while some resolving is not completed yet. Should be used instead of original $routeParams in most cases.

chain

An array of segments splitted by each level separately. Each item contains the following properties:

• name is the name of a segment;
• params is the config params hash of a segment;
• locals is a hash which contains resolve results if any;
• reload is a function to reload a segment (restart resolving, reinstantiate a controller, etc)

startsWith(val)

Helper method for checking whether current route starts with the given string.

contains(val)

Helper method for checking whether current route contains the given string.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2013 Artem Chivchalov

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.