Retrieve userId from url with AngularJs - angularjs

Question

I'm learning AngularJs at present and I've hit a brick wall due to my lack of knowledge on it.
What I'm trying to do is pass in a Id (guid) within the URL and inside my controller I'll retrieve it and pass it to a WebApi to return some data linked to that Id.
However I'm unable to get the route correct, my currently URL looks like this:
http://localhost:15216/
When I pass in the Id it will look something like this
http://localhost:15216/573637
Quite straight forward, my page is called index.html, after browsing the web and looking at this question and basically replicating what he/she has provided I'm still unable to retrieve the value from my URL.
This is my current configuration:
var myApp = angular.module('christmasvip', ['ngRoute'])
.config(['$routeProvider', function ($routeProvider) {
$routeProvider.when('/:userId', { templateUrl: '/index.html', controller: 'mainController' }).
otherwise({ redirectTo: '/index.html' });
}]);
And this is my Controller:
myApp.controller("mainController", function ($scope, $http, $routeParams) {
var userId = $routeParams.userId;
alert(userId);
});
I then manipulate the URL so it would look like :
http://localhost:15216/573637
But when I alert the userId it say's "underfined"
I've also included angular-route.js in my project
Any help/solution would be great.

Answer 1

In the documentation of ngRoute you can find an example... Try using the URL: http://localhost:15216/index.html#/573637
// Given:
// URL: http://server.com/index.html#/Chapter/1/Section/2?search=moby
// Route: /Chapter/:chapterId/Section/:sectionId
//
// Then
$routeParams ==> {chapterId:'1', sectionId:'2', search:'moby'}

Answer 2

Can you try the url
http://localhost:15216/#/573637
I assume your root is http://localhost:15216/

Answer 3

your confusing the $routeProvider in the config you say
.config(['$routeProvider', function ($routeProvider) {
$routeProvider.when('/:userId', { templateUrl: '/index.html', controller:'mainController' }).
so your telling it, "if we see any url like this '/anything' take 'anything' and supply it as a parameter to the $routeParam service
then you add
otherwise({ redirectTo: '/index.html' });
which tells it, if you get any other url redirect to "/index.html", but index.html is something so its going to want to route you to '/' with the route param as 'index.html'
also you need to make sure you have <ng-view></ng-view> inside of your index.html file for the $routeProvider to load the route correctly, that is probably your main issue, but the first thing i mentioned would probably be an error once you add it.