Angular-ui router doesn't update links - angularjs

Question

I am building a basic rss reader, Ihave a basic form which uploads a series of url into a dropdown menu, when a user chooses a specific one, I call an api to access it.
My form is the following:
<div class="panel-body" ng-controller="NewsCtrl">
<form class="form-inline" role="form">
<div class="input-group">
<div class="input-group-btn">
<button class="btn btn-info" type="button">{{loadButtonText}}</button>
<button class="btn btn-info dropdown-toggle" type="button" data-toggle="dropdown"><span class="caret"></span><span class="sr-only">Toggle-dropdown</span></button>
<ul class="dropdown-menu" role="menu">
<li ng-repeat="rss in RSSList">
{{rss.Title}}
</li>
</ul>
<input type="text" class="form-control" autocomplete="off" placeholder="This is where your feed's url will appear" data-ng-model="url">
</div>
</div>
</form>
My routes/states are defined as follows:
var myApp = angular.module('myApp',['ngSanitize','ui.router', 'myAppControllers', 'myAppFactories']);
myApp.config(['$stateProvider','$urlRouterProvider','$locationProvider',
function ($stateProvider,$urlRouterProvider,$locationProvider) {
$stateProvider
.state('home', {
url:'/home',
templateUrl: 'views/partials/partial-home.html'
})
.state('app', {
url:'/api',
templateUrl: 'views/partials/partial-news.html',
controller: 'NewsCtrl'
});
$urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/home');
$locationProvider
.html5Mode(true)
.hashPrefix('!');
}]);
And my controller is the following:
var myApp = angular.module('myAppControllers',[]);
myApp.controller('NewsCtrl', ['$scope','MyService', function($scope, Feed){
$scope.loadButtonText = 'Choose News Feed ';
$scope.RSSList = [
{Title: "CNN ",
url: 'http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss'},
{Title: "CNBC Top News ",
url: 'http://www.cnbc.com/id/100003114/device/rss/rss.html'},
];
//Loading the news items
$scope.loadFeed = function (url, e) {
$scope.url= url;
Feed.parseFeed(url).then(function (res) {
$scope.loadButtonText=angular.element(e.target).text();
$scope.feeds=res.data.query.results.item;
});
}
}]);
My problem arised when I changed to use ui-router, I know I have to change this line
{{rss.Title}}
by using ui-sref, but just changing to <a ui-sref="loadFeed(rss.url, $event);">{{rss.Title}}</a>
still doesn't upload my urls into my NewsCtrl controller, any clues?
Bonus question: When I insert a console.log just before $scope.loadButtonText and I open the developer console, it seems to upload NewsCtrl 2 times, why is that?

Answer 1

ui-sref="app"
Should work.
sref stands for "state" reference, instead of the familiar "hyperlink" reference. So it will look for a state defined with .state();
Alternatively, you can go with a good old fashioned url,
href="#/api"
This would have the same effect. sref is recommended by project developers.