6.1 KiB
Tutorial: Creating custom route matches
The Angular Router supports a powerful matching strategy that you can use to help users navigate your application. This matching strategy supports static routes, variable routes with parameters, wildcard routes, and so on. You can also build your own custom pattern matching for situations in which the URLs are more complicated.
In this tutorial, you'll build a custom route matcher using Angular's UrlMatcher
. This matcher looks for a Twitter handle in the URL.
For a working example of the final version of this tutorial, see the .
Objectives
Implement Angular's UrlMatcher
to create a custom route matcher.
Prerequisites
To complete this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of the following concepts:
- JavaScript
- HTML
- CSS
- Angular CLI
If you are unfamiliar with how Angular's router works, we recommend you review Using Angular routes in a single-page application.
Create a sample application
Using the Angular CLI, create a new application, angular-custom-route-match. In addition to the default Angular application framework, you will also create a profile component.
-
Create a new Angular project, angular-custom-route-match.
ng new angular-custom-route-matchWhen prompted with
Would you like to add Angular routing?
, selectY
.When prompted with
Which stylesheet format would you like to use?
, selectCSS
.After a few moments, a new project,
angular-custom-route-match
, is ready. -
From your terminal, navigate to the
angular-custom-route-match
directory. -
Create a component, profile.
-
In your code editor, locate the file,
profile.component.html
and replace the placeholder content with the following HTML. -
In your code editor, locate the file,
app.component.html
and replace the placeholder content with the following HTML.
Configure your routes for your application
With your application framework in place, you next need to add routing capabilities to the app.module.ts
file. As a part of this process, you will create a custom URL matcher that looks for a Twitter handle in the URL. This handle is identified by a preceding @
symbol.
-
In your code editor, open your
app.module.ts
file. -
Add an
import
statement for Angular'sRouterModule
andUrlMatcher
. -
In the imports array, add a
RouterModule.forRoot([])
statement. -
Define the custom route matcher by adding the following code to the
RouterModule.forRoot()
statement.
This custom matcher is a function that performs the following tasks:
- The matcher verifies that the array contains only one segment.
- The matcher employs a regular expression to ensure that the format of the username is a match.
- If there is a match, the function returns the entire URL, defining a
username
route parameter as a substring of the path. - If there isn't a match, the function returns null and the router continues to look for other routes that match the URL.
A custom URL matcher behaves like any other route definition. You can define child routes or lazy loaded routes as you would with any other route.
Subscribe to the route parameters
With the custom matcher in place, you now need to subscribe to the route parameters in the profile
component.
-
In your code editor, open your
profile.component.ts
file. -
Add an
import
statement for Angular'sActivatedRoute
andParamMap
. -
Add an
import
statement for RxJSmap
. -
Subscribe to the
username
route parameter. -
Inject the
ActivatedRoute
into the component's constructor.
Test your custom URL matcher
With your code in place, you can now test your custom URL matcher.
- From a terminal window, run the
ng serve
command.
-
Open a browser to
http://localhost:4200
.You should see a single web page, consisting of a sentence that reads
Navigate to my profile
. -
Click the my profile hyperlink.
A new sentence, reading
Hello, Angular!
appears on the page.
Next steps
Pattern matching with the Angular Router provides you with a lot of flexibility when you have dynamic URLs in your application. To learn more about the Angular Router, see the following topics:
This content is based on Custom Route Matching with the Angular Router, by Brandon Roberts.