CODEWITHSUNDEEP
angularjsangularjs-routing
sports
sports

Reputation: 8147

Multiple optional parameters in Angular.js

I typically use querystrings for filtering results, eg:

 URL:    /Events/List?type=art&city=miami&life=present

I can put them in any order and get the same results, eg:

 URL:    /Events/List?city=miami&life=present&type=art
 URL:    /Events/List?life=present&type=art&city=miami

I can also make them optional, eg:

 URL:    /Events/List?type=art, 
  or:    /Events/List?type=art&life=&city=


Question: How can I achieve this same "effect" with Angular.js routes? given the fact that parameters are passed all in a "RESTful" way in Angular

I was thinking in something like this:

 URL:   /Events/List/city/miami/life/present/type/art

Which I can achieve with a route like this:

 .when('/Events/List/city/:city?/life/:life?/type/:type?', { ... }

But I already see many problems:

  1. Order of parameters is important (I would have to define many times the route?)
  2. Optional parameters will give a non intuitive URL,
    eg: /Events/List/city/life/type/art,

    and this is not the case in optional querystrings (they are more intuitive to read I think):
    eg: /Events/List/?city=&life=&type=art

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2450

Answers (3)

charlietfl
charlietfl

Reputation: 171679

If you want to use query strings angular has $location.search() that is both a setter and getter.

The difference between angular search and window version location.search is the query falls after the url hash and when setting or getting it uses objects rather than strings

See Using $location in developer's guide

Upvotes: 2

Justin Bell
Justin Bell

Reputation: 396

I recently encountered a similar need (the ability to grab an unknown quantity of arguments off the path), and had started off by looking at $routeProvider. I ultimately abandoned that effort in favor of ui.router.

The most powerful (but possibly also tedious) approach for you would be to work with regex parameters. Consider the following (a snippet from some code I'm currently authoring):

$stateProvider
    .state("list", {
        url: "/",
        controller: "PluginsListController",
        templateUrl: "PluginsList.html"
    })
    .state("path", {
        url: "/{plugin}/*path",
        controller: "PluginDetailsController",
        templateUrl: "PluginDetails.html"
    })
;

The second state accepts two positional parameters: a plugin and a path. The path argument is a wildcard, that grabs everything after the immediately preceding slash. The idea here is that I can specify something like http://www.myfirsturl.com/app/MyFirstPlugin/level1/level2/level2.php, and end up with "MyFirstPlugin" in $stateParams["plugin"] and "level1/level2/level2.php" in $stateParams["path"]. It's up to the application logic to handle the long path parameter (and you would be likewise responsible for consuming this variable-length argument), but this approach does allow you to write a single state handler for an unknown number of url paths.

Upvotes: 1

Joao Leal
Joao Leal

Reputation: 5542

You can inject $routeParams into your controller. Here's an example from the docs:

// 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'}

http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ngRoute.$routeParams

Upvotes: 1

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