Single page apps are becoming increasingly popular. Sites that mimic the single page app behavior are able to provide the feel of a phone/tablet application. AngularJS helps to create applications like this easily.
We’re just going to make a simple site with a home, about, and contact page. AngularJS is built for much more advanced applications than this, but here we will show many of the concepts needed for those larger projects.
- script.js <!-- stores all our angularjs code -->
- index.html <!-- main layout -->
- pages <!-- the pages that will be injected into the main layout -->
----- home.html
----- about.html
----- contact.html
This is the simple part. We’re using Bootstrap and Font Awesome. Open up your index.html file and we’ll add a simple layout with a navigation bar.
<!-- index.html -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<!-- SCROLLS -->
<!-- load bootstrap and fontawesome via CDN -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.0.0/css/bootstrap.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.0.0/css/font-awesome.css" />
<!-- SPELLS -->
<!-- load angular and angular route via CDN -->
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.8.2/angular.min.js"></script>
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.8.2/angular-route.js"></script>
<script src="script.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<!-- HEADER AND NAVBAR -->
<header>
<nav class="navbar navbar-default">
<div class="container">
<div class="navbar-header">
<a class="navbar-brand" href="/">Angular Routing Example</a>
</div>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<li><a href="#"><i class="fa fa-home"></i> Home</a></li>
<li><a href="#about"><i class="fa fa-shield"></i> About</a></li>
<li><a href="#contact"><i class="fa fa-comment"></i> Contact</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</nav>
</header>
<!-- MAIN CONTENT AND INJECTED VIEWS -->
<div id="main">
<!-- angular templating -->
<!-- this is where content will be injected -->
</div>
</body>
</html>
For linking to pages, we’ll use the #. We don’t want the browser to think we are actually travelling to about.html or contact.html.
We’re going to setup our application. Let’s create the angular module and controller. Check out the docs for more information on each.
First, we have to create our module and controller in javascript. We will do that now in script.js.
// script.js
// create the module and name it scotchApp
var scotchApp = angular.module('scotchApp', []);
// create the controller and inject Angular's $scope
scotchApp.controller('mainController', function($scope) {
// create a message to display in our view
$scope.message = 'Everyone come and see how good I look!';
});
Let’s add the module and controller to our HTML so that Angular knows how to bootstrap our application. To test that everything is working, we will also show the $scope.message variable that we created.
<!-- index.html -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- define angular app -->
<html ng-app="scotchApp">
<head>
<!-- SCROLLS -->
<!-- load bootstrap and fontawesome via CDN -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.0.0/css/bootstrap.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.0.0/css/font-awesome.css" />
<!-- SPELLS -->
<!-- load angular via CDN -->
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.25/angular.min.js"></script>
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.25/angular-route.js"></script>
<script src="script.js"></script>
</head>
<!-- define angular controller -->
<body ng-controller="mainController">
...
<!-- MAIN CONTENT AND INJECTED VIEWS -->
<div id="main">
{{ message }}
<!-- angular templating -->
<!-- this is where content will be injected -->
</div>
nside of our main div, we will now see the message that we created. Since we have our module and controller set up and we know that Angular is working properly, we will start working on using this layout to show the different pages.
ng-view is an Angular directive that will include the template of the current route (/home, /about, or /contact) in the main layout file. In plain words, it takes the file we want based on the route and injects it into our main layout (index.html).
We will add the ng-view code to our site in the div#main to tell Angular where to place our rendered pages.
<!-- index.html -->
...
<!-- MAIN CONTENT AND INJECTED VIEWS -->
<div id="main">
<!-- angular templating -->
<!-- this is where content will be injected -->
<div ng-view></div>
</div>
...
Since we are making a single page application and we don’t want any page refreshes, we’ll use Angular’s routing capabilities.
Let’s look in our Angular file and add to our application. We will be using $routeProvider in Angular to handle our routing. This way, Angular will handle all of the magic required to go get a new file and inject it into our layout.
// script.js
// create the module and name it scotchApp
// also include ngRoute for all our routing needs
var scotchApp = angular.module('scotchApp', ['ngRoute']);
// configure our routes
scotchApp.config(function($routeProvider) {
$routeProvider
// route for the home page
.when('/', {
templateUrl : 'pages/home.html',
controller : 'mainController'
})
// route for the about page
.when('/about', {
templateUrl : 'pages/about.html',
controller : 'aboutController'
})
// route for the contact page
.when('/contact', {
templateUrl : 'pages/contact.html',
controller : 'contactController'
});
});
// create the controller and inject Angular's $scope
scotchApp.controller('mainController', function($scope) {
// create a message to display in our view
$scope.message = 'Everyone come and see how good I look!';
});
scotchApp.controller('aboutController', function($scope) {
$scope.message = 'Look! I am an about page.';
});
scotchApp.controller('contactController', function($scope) {
$scope.message = 'Contact us! JK. This is just a demo.';
});
Now we have defined our routes with $routeProvider. As you can see by the configuration, you can specify the route, the template file to use, and even a controller. This way, each part of our application will use its own view and Angular controller.
$locationProvider to enable the HTML History API. This will remove the hash and make pretty URLs. For more information: Pretty URLs in AngularJS: Removing the #.Our home page will pull the home.html file. About and contact will pull their respective files. Now if we view our app, and click through the navigation, our content will change just how we wanted.
To finish off this tutorial, we just need to define the pages that will be injected. We will also have them each display a message from its respective controller.
<!-- home.html -->
<div class="jumbotron text-center">
<h1>Home Page</h1>
<p>{{ message }}</p>
</div>
<!-- about.html -->
<div class="jumbotron text-center">
<h1>About Page</h1>
<p>{{ message }}</p>
</div>
<!-- contact.html -->
<div class="jumbotron text-center">
<h1>Contact Page</h1>
<p>{{ message }}</p>
</div>
Working Locally: Angular routing will only work if you have an environment set for it. Make sure you are using http://localhost or some sort of environment. Otherwise Angular will spit out a Cross origin requests are only supported for HTTP.