# In-app navigation: routing to views
In a single-page app, you change what the user sees by showing or hiding portions of the display that correspond to particular components, rather than going out to the server to get a new page.
As users perform application tasks, they need to move between the different [views](guide/glossary#view "Definition of view") that you have defined.
To handle the navigation from one [view](guide/glossary#view) to the next, you use the Angular **`Router`**.
The **`Router`** enables navigation by interpreting a browser URL as an instruction to change the view.
To explore a sample app featuring the router's primary features, see the .
## Prerequisites
Before creating a route, you should be familiar with the following:
* [Basics of components](guide/architecture-components)
* [Basics of templates](guide/glossary#template)
* An Angular app—you can generate a basic Angular app using the [Angular CLI](cli).
For an introduction to Angular with a ready-made app, see [Getting Started](start).
For a more in-depth experience of building an Angular app, see the [Tour of Heroes](tutorial) tutorial. Both guide you through using component classes and templates.
{@a basics}
## Generate an app with routing enabled
The following command uses the Angular CLI to generate a basic Angular app with an app routing module, called `AppRoutingModule`, which is an NgModule where you can configure your routes.
The app name in the following example is `routing-app`.
ng new routing-app --routing
When generating a new app, the CLI prompts you to select CSS or a CSS preprocessor.
For this example, accept the default of `CSS`.
### Adding components for routing
To use the Angular router, an app needs to have at least two components so that it can navigate from one to the other. To create a component using the CLI, enter the following at the command line where `first` is the name of your component:
ng generate component first
Repeat this step for a second component but give it a different name.
Here, the new name is `second`.
ng generate component second
The CLI automatically appends `Component`, so if you were to write `first-component`, your component would be `FirstComponentComponent`.
{@a basics-base-href}
#### ``
This guide works with a CLI-generated Angular app.
If you are working manually, make sure that you have `` in the `` of your index.html file.
This assumes that the `app` folder is the application root, and uses `"/"`.
### Importing your new components
To use your new components, import them into `AppRoutingModule` at the top of the file, as follows:
import { FirstComponent } from './first/first.component';
import { SecondComponent } from './second/second.component';
{@a basic-route}
## Defining a basic route
There are three fundamental building blocks to creating a route.
Import the `AppRoutingModule` into `AppModule` and add it to the `imports` array.
The Angular CLI performs this step for you.
However, if you are creating an app manually or working with an existing, non-CLI app, verify that the imports and configuration are correct.
The following is the default `AppModule` using the CLI with the `--routing` flag.
1. Import `RouterModule` and `Routes` into your routing module.
The Angular CLI performs this step automatically.
The CLI also sets up a `Routes` array for your routes and configures the `imports` and `exports` arrays for `@NgModule()`.
1. Define your routes in your `Routes` array.
Each route in this array is a JavaScript object that contains two properties.
The first property, `path`, defines the URL path for the route.
The second property, `component`, defines the component Angular should use for the corresponding path.
1. Add your routes to your application.
Now that you have defined your routes, you can add them to your application.
First, add links to the two components.
Assign the anchor tag that you want to add the route to the `routerLink` attribute.
Set the value of the attribute to the component to show when a user clicks on each link.
Next, update your component template to include ``.
This element informs Angular to update the application view with the component for the selected route.
{@a route-order}
### Route order
The order of routes is important because the `Router` uses a first-match wins strategy when matching routes, so more specific routes should be placed above less specific routes.
List routes with a static path first, followed by an empty path route, which matches the default route.
The [wildcard route](guide/router#setting-up-wildcard-routes) comes last because it matches every URL and the `Router` selects it only if no other routes match first.
{@a getting-route-information}
## Getting route information
Often, as a user navigates your application, you want to pass information from one component to another.
For example, consider an application that displays a shopping list of grocery items.
Each item in the list has a unique `id`.
To edit an item, users click an Edit button, which opens an `EditGroceryItem` component.
You want that component to retrieve the `id` for the grocery item so it can display the right information to the user.
You can use a route to pass this type of information to your application components.
To do so, you use the [ActivatedRoute](api/router/ActivatedRoute) interface.
To get information from a route:
1. Import `ActivatedRoute` and `ParamMap` to your component.
These `import` statements add several important elements that your component needs.
To learn more about each, see the following API pages:
* [`Router`](api/router)
* [`ActivatedRoute`](api/router/ActivatedRoute)
* [`ParamMap`](api/router/ParamMap)
1. Inject an instance of `ActivatedRoute` by adding it to your application's constructor:
1. Update the `ngOnInit()` method to access the `ActivatedRoute` and track the `id` parameter:
ngOnInit() {
this.route.queryParams.subscribe(params => {
this.name = params['name'];
});
}
Note: The preceding example uses a variable, `name`, and assigns it the value based on the `name` parameter.
{@a wildcard-route-how-to}
## Setting up wildcard routes
A well-functioning application should gracefully handle when users attempt to navigate to a part of your application that does not exist.
To add this functionality to your application, you set up a wildcard route.
The Angular router selects this route any time the requested URL doesn't match any router paths.
To set up a wildcard route, add the following code to your `routes` definition.
{ path: '**', component: }
The two asterisks, `**`, indicate to Angular that this `routes` definition is a wildcard route.
For the component property, you can define any component in your application.
Common choices include an application-specific `PageNotFoundComponent`, which you can define to [display a 404 page](guide/router#404-page-how-to) to your users; or a redirect to your application's main component.
A wildcard route is the last route because it matches any URL.
For more detail on why order matters for routes, see [Route order](guide/router#route-order).
{@a 404-page-how-to}
## Displaying a 404 page
To display a 404 page, set up a [wildcard route](guide/router#wildcard-route-how-to) with the `component` property set to the component you'd like to use for your 404 page as follows:
The last route with the `path` of `**` is a wildcard route.
The router selects this route if the requested URL doesn't match any of the paths earlier in the list and sends the user to the `PageNotFoundComponent`.
## Setting up redirects
To set up a redirect, configure a route with the `path` you want to redirect from, the `component` you want to redirect to, and a `pathMatch` value that tells the router how to match the URL.
In this example, the third route is a redirect so that the router defaults to the `first-component` route.
Notice that this redirect precedes the wildcard route.
Here, `path: ''` means to use the initial relative URL (`''`).
For more details on `pathMatch` see [Spotlight on `pathMatch`](guide/router-tutorial-toh#pathmatch).
{@a nesting-routes}
## Nesting routes
As your application grows more complex, you may want to create routes that are relative to a component other than your root component.
These types of nested routes are called child routes.
This means you're adding a second `` to your app, because it is in addition to the `` in `AppComponent`.
In this example, there are two additional child components, `child-a`, and `child-b`.
Here, `FirstComponent` has its own `