Browser history doubled in angularjs app - angularjs

So I am using a web app which has an iframe pointing to my angularjs application. If I navigate around the parent web app, I notice that the browser history is doubled up. For example, if I navigate to contacts > about us > home, then the history will be:
- home
- about us
- about us
- contacts
- contacts
If I point the iframe to a simple web page with no angular, then the parent app history works fine. I came across this bug on the angularjs website with a similar issue which appears to have been resolved in an earlier version of angular: https://github.com/angular/angular.js/issues/1054 but it doesn't seem to be resolved for some people. I'm using v1.2.26. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

So it turns out my assumptions about routing as the potential cause were correct, and I can't believe I didn't realize this sooner. Essentially my iframe app routes to different locations through some sort of event. Each route, while it does not impact the parent url, will add a new entry to the browser history (which is normal browser behaviour). The iframe app is designed upon page load to run through a couple routes, thus adding to the browser history, and making it appear like each parent page navigation was doubled.
The question now becomes, is there a way to prevent each route execution from adding the browser history?
UPDATE:
$location.replace() seems to be the only solution I can find. The app makes use of $location.path() a lot to trigger a new route; so I've modified it to be $location.path().replace(); This will replace the current history entry instead of adding a new one.

Related

How to route to two pages on certain conditions with $urlRouterProvider.otherwise(" ") in angularjs

I have a strange requirement. Since I have a 404 page on my angularjs app, I don't want to leave it unnoticed because it has a random joke API added to it.
Now my angular js application uses UI route provider for routing. I have a
$urlRouterProvider.otherwise("/home")
code in my angularjs configuration. I want the page to redirect to home if there isn't any path specified. E.g. https://mypage.com should route to https://mypage.com/#!/home but if someone types a wrong state name manually, it should redirect it to the 404 page.
My only question is since this requires two routings in otherwise statement, is it even possible? And if it is possible, then how?

Backbone router: Use hashbangs

I was setting up a simple router in Backbone.js while I noted an issue, I googled for a long time and found some solutions.
The problem is that whenever I navigate to a url, this url will work while I'm inside the app itself, but once you bookmark it and return it will obviously return a 404 since that page doesn't exist.
Backbone.history.navigate('test', true);
This will navigate to http://www.domain.com/test, which is great, but once you refresh the same URL it returns a 404.
There are ways to get this to work with using a specific .htaccess file, but I'm building this inside an existing website, so I can't use this.
Is there a way in Backbone.js to revert to just using hashbangs? My url would then look like this `http://www.domain.com/#!/test
This might not be the cleanest URL, but at least it will work.
Or am I just missing something obvious here? It can't be that I'm the only person with this problem.
You're using pushState according to your url, so you've got 2 main options:
stop using pushState when starting Backbone history (which would be the equivalent of using a hashbang, except for SEO)
have your server return a page for every URL your app generates (it can be the same exact page)
In the second case, if you don't care about SEO, you can have a catch all rule always returning (e.g.) index.html containing your Backbone app. When you start Backbone's history, it will lokk at the URL and navigate to the proper page (although you might have a "double render" effect).
If you're worried about SEO, you need to return page content for SEO along with your Backbone app.

Alternative to the Backbone router without hash fallbacks and better back/forward state support?

I am currently using the Backbone router for my SPA. It sort of works OK, but I am having a number of small issues:
The problem is - I want to either have pushState navigation or none, meaning - app state gets executed (when I pass the "initial" URL to the router or I trigger a route via JS), but the address bar doesn't change. I don't want the hashChange fallbacks for IE9. It will work just fine if IE9 does not get the back button and the changing address bar, but still retains navigation state within the application. I can then show the users a URL which they can bookmark and the server will route that page and the app state will bootstrap based on the initial URL. The address bar not changing in IE during in-app navigation is a compromise I am willing to accept.
Another problem that I have is that I am using navigate(url, {trigger: true}) for my intercepted HREFs, and the back button doesn't work (does nothing). But I really need to change app state on forward/back navigation, even if it gets rebuilt for that particular URL - I'd rather rebuild the state.
What are my options in terms of routers that I could use? Like I said, I don't want to have hashbang fallbacks (meaning - I only want to have ONE way of representing URLs in the application, period).
What should I use? Director.js? History.js? There seems to be quite a number of router/history libraries out there but which one is the closest to what I'm looking for?..
Supposing you have Modernizr around scanning the HTML5 history support, if I understand well wouldn't a fast solution be, in your main layout js file, to add as event
'click a' : "navigate"
and add the function navigate to this layout as follow
navigate : function(e){
if(!Modernizr.history) document.location.href = $(e.currentTarget).attr("href");
},
to optimize, you could of course bind that only if history is not supported,don't forget to include "modernizr" in your layout. Hope this is an interesting answer for you..

Backbone router, pushstate, and relative urls

I'm making my first backbone app. I have pushstate enabled. In the router I have two routes.
'link1(/)' : 'link1Route',
'link2(/)' : 'link2Route'
On my link1 page, I have a link pointing to link 2 like so:
Link2
I click on the link, the router takes over and I go to link2Route as expected. However, if I hover over the link, the status bar indicates that the link is at domain.com/link1/link2 rather than domain.com/link2. This is correct given the relative url structure on the link1 page. Unfortunately, if a user decides to open the link in a new window or tab, backbone's router will not take effect. This is expected since opening in a new window or tab results in a new page load from the server. The problem of course, is that domain.com/link1/link2 does not exist.
What are some ways of dealing with this situation? Thanks.
As mateusmaso indicated, you need to change your link target to "/link2" (i.e. including the "/").
In addition, when implementing pushState, don't forget you need your server to respond with content if a user requests the "domain.com/link2" URL. The response can be index.html if you wish, but the server must return a page for that URL.
If you return index.html for all your Backbone-related URLs, when your Backbone app gets started the route-handling code will get fired and the proper data will be displayed.
If you want to learn more about routing and how to manage it properly without needing to pass trigger: true when calling navigate, check out pages 32-46 of this free sample pdf: http://samples.leanpub.com/marionette-gentle-introduction-sample.pdf (full disclosure, I'm the book author)
You must serve the correct index.html at the server level — since this is before the JavaScript even loads on the page.
http://readystate4.com/2012/05/17/nginx-and-apache-rewrite-to-support-html5-pushstate/

What is client-side routing and how is it used?

I will be glad if someone could answer the following questions
How does it work?
Why is it necessary?
What does it improve?
Client side routing is the same as server side routing, but it's ran in the browser.
In a typical web application you have several pages which map into different URLs, and each of the pages has some logic and a template which is then rendered.
Client-side routing simply runs this process in the browser, using JavaScript for the logic and some JS based template engine or other such approaches to render the pages.
Typically it's used in single page applications, where the server-side code is primarily used to provide a RESTful API the client-side code uses via Ajax.
I was trying to build a Single page application and came to know about client side routing.
By implementing client side routing I was able to achieve the following
The front and back buttons in the browser started working for my single page JavaScript application. This was very important while accessing the page from a mobile browser.
The user was able to Bookmark/share a URL which was not possible earlier.
I know that it's late but I have some information about how the client side routing (CSR) works. This answer does not try to provide a full js implementation of client side routing but rather tries to shed some light on what concepts will help you implement one of your own. It's true that when user click an anchor tag, the browser sends a request to the server. But we will be able to intercept the event and prevent it's default behavior, i.e sending a request to the server by using "event.preventDefault();". Below is snippet from React routers web page.
<a
href="/contact"
onClick={event => {
// stop the browser from changing the URL and requesting the new document
event.preventDefault();
// push an entry into the browser history stack and change the URL
window.history.pushState({}, undefined, "/contact");
}}
/>
Also listening to forward/backward button click is important. This can be done by,
window.addEventListener("popstate", () => {
// URL changed!
});
But looking at the above two snippets you can imagine how a CSR could be implemented. There is much more to it. That's why libraries like React Router exists and web frameworks like angular provide CSR by default.
If you want more information please visit the link below, it will take your the concepts page of react router.
https://reactrouter.com/docs/en/v6/getting-started/concepts
Also if you want to get more depth into the topic your could check out the code of Angular router. Comparing the two implementations will give a much more insight.
What :
In react the history object takes care of that what it does..it keeps track of all the addresses and the Router defines all the different routes. So Router takes the help of this History object to keep a track of various addresses / History of the current URL and based on that location it serves the appropriate content.
Why :
To reduce unnecessary reloads.
For better user experience.
It's internally handled by JS.

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