Practices - Do you use client-side routing?

Single page applications (SPAs) are getting more and more popular, and for good reason – a better and faster user experience, reduced server load and encourages good API separation.

But have you ever visited a website, thought “I’ll refresh that” and then got taken back to the home screen? Or tried to copy or bookmark the URL, only to find it’s just “/Home”? This happens when client-side routing hasn’t been implemented properly and is a big hit to a site’s usability.

This is easily fixed with Angular ’s routing capabilities, and implementing it in your SPA will confer several advantages:

• URLs can be copy-pasted and shared
• Page refreshes work as expected
• Less prone to errors
• Better separation of concerns (navigation vs page state)

A better way is to set up routes, and use a router (the first-party component router is great for this) to manage your components: