$RouteProvider should activate controller, even when no templateUrl or template is passed

[lukasolson]

Sometimes, you don't want to have a template when changing routes. You just want to activate the controller. Currently, it's not possible to do this in Angular.

[leeola]

👍

Is there a commonly accepted pattern for solving this perhaps? Something akin to writing your own router?

[pkozlowski-opensource]

@lukasolson This sounds really strange to me. Could you elaborate on your use-case?

The thing is that the role of a controller is to set-up a scope for a partial (coming from a template or templateUrl) so data and behavior can be available in a partial. If there is no view there is not much need to setup a scope (there is no one to take advantage of it).

[lukasolson]

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14411740/how-to-route-without-a-templateurl/

My use case is that I have a route that makes a request to the server and routes to one of two possible routes based on the response. Is there a better way to do this?

[abh]

Why not just add a small "Loading..." (or empty!) template snippet to the intermediary controller?

[leeola]

Why not just add a small "Loading..." (or empty!) template snippet to the intermediary controller?

But that's changing the view for no reason. The concept is to be able to route something that has no view.

This is mostly just an event (like a click-logout event), but the importance of this is that it is being routed, thus supporting deep linking for the /logout action.

I'm not saying what you suggest will not work, it's just that what you suggest is more of a hack. This specific route has no view, and giving it one is a workaround to a problem.

[lrlopez]

You could add a listener to the $routeChangeSuccess event (have a look into http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng.$route). Inside the event handler you should be able to do your magic (i.e. querying the server and changing the path when the promise is returned) if the route matches.

[petebacondarwin]

Have you tried putting the code in a resolve handler for the route?

On 19 January 2013 20:30, Luis Ramón López notifications@github.com wrote:

You could add a listener to $routeChangeSuccess events (have a look into
http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng.$route). Inside the event handle you
could (i.e. querying the server and changing the path when the promise is
returned) if the route matches.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1838#issuecomment-12460636.

[lukasolson]

But where would I put the listener on $routeChangeSuccess or the resolve handler? In a controller?

[petebacondarwin]

Inside the resolve handler you could change the location if necessary.
These handlers always get run before the template is instantiated.

On 21 January 2013 15:52, Lukas Olson notifications@github.com wrote:

But where would I put the listener on $routeChangeSuccess or the resolve
handler? In a controller?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1838#issuecomment-12503461.

[lukasolson]

Ah, wasn't aware of resolve handlers. I guess you could put it there. Something like

.when("/", {resolve: {redirect: RedirectController}})

where RedirectController is the function that actually redirects??

[petebacondarwin]

Yes something like that but I would not call it a Controller! It will be
more of a service.

.when("/", {resolve: {redirect: redirectService}})

On 21 January 2013 18:21, Lukas Olson notifications@github.com wrote:

Ah, wasn't aware of resolve handlers. I guess you could put it there.
Something like

.when("/", {resolve: {redirect: RedirectController}})

??

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1838#issuecomment-12510495.

[petebacondarwin]

If you are happy with this then we should close this issue. Let me know if you think it should be reopened for any reason.

[lukasolson]

Sounds good. Thanks for all your help.

[leeola]

@petebacondarwin @lukasolson

I'm noticing a problem with this method. It seems when you use the resolver as a method to trigger logic (such as a redirect or logout handler), it can only occur once.

If my understanding is right, this is because the service is being loaded so that it can be injected into the controller, but it is only ever loaded once.

This seems like a rather large flaw in this usage.. unless i am doing something wrong. Thoughts?