Different states for same URL

[KrisBraun]

Is there a way to map a URL to two different states depending on some variable (in my case, whether the user is signed in or not)?

[nateabele]

This is not supported, though you can vary which template you serve with the templateProvider option. Having had to do something similar, I would suggest that there are better ways than trying to have multiple states for a single URL.

[KrisBraun]

I was pretty set on making this work since it's for the domain root. Found a pattern that seems to be working nicely. Created a third state that simply transitions to the appropriate state:

  .state 'home',
    url: '/'
    controller: ['$state', ($state) ->
      if gon?.me?
        $state.transitionTo('root.my.sparks')
      else
        $state.transitionTo('landing')
    ]

[nateabele]

Yup, that is one of several totally valid approaches. Keep in mind that you can create states without URLs, meaning either of those two states could appear to reside at /, even after the transition.

[KrisBraun]

Yes, that's what I did. One trap is needing to be careful to always transition through the 'home' state (including when using ui-sref), otherwise the location isn't updated.

[nateabele]

Yeah, the only alternative there that I can think of there would be to make both your landing state and root.my.sparks state children of your home state.

[ksperling]

@nateabele that seems like a valid solution, given that they're both "variants" of the home state.

It might be possible to do the transition in onEnter() in the home state rather than relying on the controller to load in the ui-view.

If you know synchronously if the user is logged in, you can even catch stateChangeStart() and do a preventDEfault and a new transitionTo in there, which should make the sneaky transition pretty much invisible to most other parts of the app.

We should probably introduce a few more hooks like onBeforeEnter/Exit that gets triggered before any other transtion-related work gets done.

[nateabele]

Good idea.

[KrisBraun]

Thanks, @ksperling, the $stateChangeStart technique works well, avoiding an unnecessary state change when clicking a link for the current state.

[liuxiong332]

Thank you. The solution to route the different template for the same url is very good. I finally find the solution. Good!