UI-Router for Angular - Hello Solar System!

In this tutorial, we will build on Hello World! and explore a slightly more ambitious Hello Solar System app.

This app introduces some new concepts and UI-Router features.

We have implemented a list/detail interface. To accomplish this, we added two new application states:

  • The people state shows a list of all the people.
  • The person state shows details for a specific person.

At any time, you can click the Refresh button in the Stackblitz preview. The URL contains the information necessary to restore the application’s state. When the app restarts, UIRouter will route to the same state and load the same component and data as before.

Live demo

Take a look at the completed Hello Solar System live demo below. Click “People” to view the list of all people. Click a person’s name to view that person’s details.

As you navigate through the app, the UI-Router State Visualizer shows the current state


UIRouter Config

You can perform imperative router configuration or run initialization code before the router starts. Supply a config function as config to UIRouterModule.forRoot().

import { uiRouterConfigFn } from "./config/router.config";
...
  imports: [
    ...
    UIRouterModule.forRoot({
      states: INITIAL_STATES,
      useHash: true,
      config: uiRouterConfigFn
    })
  ]

The function is called with two parameters: the UIRouter instance and the Angular Injector.

/** UIRouter Config Function  */
export function uiRouterConfigFn(router: UIRouter, injector: Injector) {
  // Configure the initial state
  // If the browser URL doesn't matches any state when the router starts,
  // go to the `hello` state by default
  router.urlService.rules.initial({ state: "hello" });
 
  // Use @uirouter/visualizer to show the states as a tree
  StateTree.create(router, document.getElementById("statetree"), {
    width: 200,
    height: 100
  });}

You can also supply a config function to UIRouterModule.forChild(). You can perform configuration or initialization specific to each feature/lazy loaded module.

Resolve data

When a user switches back and forth between states of a single page web app, the app often needs to fetch application data from a server API, such as a REST endpoint.

A state can specify the data it requires by defining a resolve: property. When the user tries to activate a state which has a resolve: property, UI-Router will fetch the required data before activating the state. The fetched data is then bound to the state’s component.

The resolve: property on a state definition is an array. Each element of the array is an object which defines some data to be fetched. The object has the Dependency Injection token (name) for the data being loaded. It has a resolveFn which returns a promise for the data. It also has a deps property, used to define the DI tokens for the resolveFn’s dependencies (function parameters).

The resolve property of the people state is an array containing a single object. The object defines how to fetch the people data, and assigns it a DI token (its name).

resolve: [
  {
    token: "people",
    deps: [PeopleService],
    resolveFn: (peopleService: PeopleService) => peopleService.getAllPeople()
  }
]

The object defines a resolveFn which returns a promise for all the people data. The resolveFn is injected with the PeopleService because the first element of the deps property is the PeopleService token. The people data is assigned a DI token of 'people'.

When fetching resolve data, we recommend delegating to services which return promises.

UI-Router waits until the promise returned from PeopleService.getAllPeople() resolves before activating the people state. The People component is created, and the list of people is fed into the component’s people: @Input().

export class People { 
  @Input() people;
}

State Parameters

We also want to allow the user to be able view the details for a specific person. The person state takes a personId parameter, and uses it to fetch that specific person’s details.

The parameter value is included as a part of the URL. This enables the same person details to be shown when the browser is reloaded.

The person state definition:

export const personState = {
  name: "person",
  url: "/people/:personId", // The personId parameter is defined as part of the URL
  component: Person,
  resolve: [
    {
      token: "person",
      deps: [Transition, PeopleService],
      resolveFn: (trans: Transition, peopleService: PeopleService) =>
        peopleService.getPerson(trans.params().personId)
    }
  ]
};

The URL will reflect the current personId parameter value, e.g., /people/21

The person resolve delegates to PeopleService to fetch the correct person. It passes the personId parameter, which it received from the Transition object. The Transition is a special injectable object with information about the current state transition.

Linking with params

Note that our app’s main Navigation Bar links to three states: hello, about, and people, but it doesn’t include a link directly to the person state. This is because the state cannot be activated without a parameter value for the personId parameter.

In the People component we create one link to the person state for each person in the list. We still create the link using uiSref, but we also include the personId parameter value. As we loop over each person object using *ngFor, we provide the uiSref with the personId using each person’s .id property.

<li *ngFor="let person of people">
  <a uiSref="person" [uiParams]="{ personId: person.id }">
    {{ person.name }}
  </a>
 </li>

Updated: