Exploring Angular — Part 7: Configure Routes and Create Navigation Links
If you missed the previous article on Services and Dependency Injection, you can catch up right here: Exploring Angular — Part 6: Services and Dependency Injection.
Navigating the Angular Route Configuration
Think of Angular routes as signposts in your application, guiding users to different views or pages. Proper route configuration allows users to seamlessly transition between sections of your application, providing a cohesive user experience.
Setting Up Routes
To get started, you define your application’s routes in an Angular module. Each route is an object that specifies a path and a component to display when the path is matched. Here’s a simplified example:
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { RouterModule, Routes } from '@angular/router';
import { HomeComponent } from './home.component';
import { AboutComponent } from './about.component';
const routes: Routes = [
{ path: '', component: HomeComponent },
{ path: 'about', component: AboutComponent },
];
@NgModule({
imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)],
exports: [RouterModule],
})
export class AppRoutingModule {}In this example, we define two routes: the default route (empty path) maps to the HomeComponent, and the /about path maps to the AboutComponent.
Adding the Router Outlet
To display the routed components, you place a <router-outlet></router-outlet> element in your application's template. This element acts as a placeholder where Angular inserts the matched component's view.
<router-outlet></router-outlet>Now, when a user navigates to / or /about, Angular will display the corresponding component's content within the <router-outlet>.
Crafting Navigation Links
Navigation links are the interactive elements that allow users to move between different views or pages in your Angular application. Angular provides a handy directive called routerLink to create these links.
Let’s say you want to create a navigation link to the AboutComponent in your…