Rejected state transition leaves unsynchronized url

[Danita]

Given the following states:

$stateProvider.state('account', {
    url: "/account",
    templateUrl: 'app/account/account.html',
    controller: 'AccountCtrl',
    data : {
        access : "EVERYBODY"
    }
});

$stateProvider.state('contacts', {
    url: "/contacts",
    templateUrl: 'app/contacts/contacts.html',
    controller: 'ContactsCtrl',
    data : {
        access : "LOGGED_IN"
    }
});

I'm trying to prevent anonymous users from visiting any LOGGED_IN states. So I'm setting this up in the main application controller:

$rootScope.$on('$stateChangeStart', function(event, toState, toParams, fromState, fromParams){
    if ( toState && toState.data && toState.data.access == "LOGGED_IN" && !user.loggedIn() ) {
        event.preventDefault();
        $state.transitionTo('account');
        return false;
    }
})

So far it works -- the user is redirected to the account state if he's not logged in; but the resulting url in the browser is that which would have been if the user transitioned to one of the "forbidden" states. How can I prevent this from happening?

[laurelnaiad]

I would want it to work as you expected but I might have a guess as to why it doesn't. In the short run, what happens if you wrap the new transitionTo in a short timeout?

[Danita]

Didn't work. I tried this:

$timeout(function() {
    $state.transitionTo('account', {}, true);
},1000);

For now I found that if I use something like this it works, but it feels like a hack.

$location.path('/account');

And it flashes for a moment the url in the address bar when trying to transition to a forbidden state.

[nateabele]

Hm, that's interesting. I'm pretty sure we have test cases covering this. Have you tried to do your own build against the latest master?

[ohana54]

This issue is acknowledged in #273 :
"the problem is that when a state transition is initiated by a URL ($location) change, the location has already been changed by the browser."

According to that comment by @ksperling I guess the problem exists in the latest master as well.

[nateabele]

@Danita How are the transitions happening? By users clicking on links that change the URL?

[Danita]

@nateabele Yes, it's triggered when users try to navigate to another url using an anchor.