Angular Router: Navigation Using RouterLink, Navigate, or NavigateByUrl

Introduction

In Angular, RouterLink is a directive for navigating to a different route declaratively. Router.navigate and Router.navigateByURL are two methods available to the Router class to navigate imperatively in your component classes.

Let’s explore how to use RouterLink, Router.navigate, and Router.navigateByURL.

Using RouterLink

A typical link in HTML looks like this:

<a href="/example">
  Example HTML link.
</a>

This example link will direct the user to the /example page.

However, a single page application (SPA) does not have different pages to link to. Instead, it has different views to display to the user. To allow a user to navigate and change the view, you will want to use the RouterLink directive instead of href:

<a routerLink="/users/sammy">
  Link that uses a string.
</a>

This RouterLink example will direct the user to the component at /users/sammy.

The different URL segments can also be passed in an array like this:

<a [routerLink]="['/', 'users', 'sammy']">
  Link that uses an array.
</a>

These two examples are formatted differently but will be directed to the same component at /users/sammy.

Relative Paths

You can use '../ to go up to higher levels in the navigation using something like this:

<a [routerLink]="['../', 'posts', 'sammy']">
  Link that goes up a level.
</a>

In that example, if the user is at /users/sammy, the navigation will change to /posts/sammy.

It is possible to prepend the first URL segment with a ./, ../, or no leading slash.

Parameters

You can pass in parameters to the navigation with an object in the list of URL segments:

<a [routerLink]="['/', 'users', {display: 'verbose'}, 'sammy']">
  Link with parameter.
</a>

In that example, the Router will navigate to /users;display=verbose/sammy.

Named Outlets

You can tell the Router what to place in a named outlet with something like this:

<a [routerLink]="['/', 'users', { outlets: { side: ['sammy'] } }]">
  Link with a side outlet.
</a>

In that example, the sammy segment will be placed in the outlet named side.

It is also possible to tell the Router what to place in multiple named outlets with something like this:

<a [routerLink]="['/', 'users', { outlets: { side: ['sammy'], footer: ['sharks'] } }]">
  Link with a side and footer outlets.
</a>

In this example, the sammy segment will be placed in the outlet named side and the sharks segment will be placed in the outlet named footer.

Using Router

There are two methods available on Angular’s Router class to navigate imperatively in your component classes: Router.navigate and Router.navigateByUrl. Both methods return a promise that resolves to true if the navigation is successful, null if there’s no navigation, false if the navigation fails, or is completely rejected if there’s an error.

To use either method, you’ll first want to make sure that the Router class is injected into your component class.

First, import Router into your component class:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { Router } from '@angular/router';

Then, add Router to the dependencies:

@Component({
  // ...
})
export class AppComponent {

  constructor(private router: Router) {
    // ...
  }

  // ...
}

Now, you can use Router.navigate or Router.navigateByUrl.

Router.navigate

You pass in an array of URL segments to Router.navigate.

Here’s a basic example using the Router.navigate method:

goPlaces() {
  this.router.navigate(['/', 'users']);
}

And here’s an example demonstrating how Router.navigate is thenable:

goPlaces() {
  this.router.navigate(['/', 'users'])
    .then(nav => {
      console.log(nav); // true if navigation is successful
    }, err => {
      console.log(err) // when there's an error
    });
}

If Router.navigate is successful in this example, it will display true. If Router.navigate is unsuccessful in this example, it will display an error.

Router.navigateByUrl

Router.navigateByUrl is similar to Router.navigate, except that a string is passed in instead of URL segments. The navigation should be absolute and start with a /.

Here’s a basic example using the Router.navigateByUrl method:

goPlaces() {
  this.router.navigateByUrl('/users;display=verbose/sammy');
}

In this example, Router.navigateByUrl will navigate to /users;display=verbose/sammy.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned about navigation in Angular applications. You were introduced to RouterLink, Router.navigate, and Router.navigateByURL.

If you’d like to learn more about Angular, check out our Angular topic page for exercises and programming projects.