Getting started with Angular Router: Tips for Designing Navigation in Your App

As a frontend developer, designing navigation in your application is a crucial aspect that demands attention. Navigation is one of the primary ways that users interact with your app, and it is essential to design it with a user-friendly and intuitive interface. Angular router is a powerful tool that provides a seamless and smooth navigation experience in your application. In this article, we will explore the basics of Angular router and provide some tips for designing the navigation interface in your app.

What is Angular Router?

Angular Router is a powerful library that helps you to manage navigation within your application. Router enables you to build a single-page application with multiple views that are loaded on demand, without refreshing the page. It provides a seamless navigation experience to the user by loading and unloading the components based on the requested URL. Router also enables you to define the hierarchical navigation structure for your application.

Routing in Angular is based on the concept of the route. A route is a mapping between a URL path and a component that should be displayed when the user navigates to that URL. Router also provides various features like guards, resolvers, and lazy loading of modules to enhance the overall navigation experience of the user.

How to add Router to your Angular application?

Angular Router is a built-in library, and you don't need to install or import it into your application separately. However, you need to enable it by adding the RouterModule to your AppModule. To enable the router, you need to follow these basic steps:

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { Routes, RouterModule } from '@angular/router';

const routes: Routes = [
  // Define your routes here
];

@NgModule({
  imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)],
  exports: [RouterModule]
})
export class AppRoutingModule { }

Here, 'Routes' is an array of route definitions, where each definition maps a URL path to a component that should be displayed when the user navigates to that URL. RouterModule.forRoot(routes) method initializes the router configuration with the provided routes, and exports the RouterModule so that it can be imported by other modules.

How to define routes in Angular?

Defining routes in Angular is straightforward, and it requires an array of route definitions. A route definition is an object that contains the following properties:

• path: The URL path that maps to the component.
• component: The component that gets displayed when the user navigates to the given route.
• redirectTo: The URL to redirect to when the user navigates to the route.
• children: An array of child routes that define the nested routes for a given path.
• loadChildren: A lazy-loaded module or component to load when the user navigates to the given route.

const routes: Routes = [
  { path: '', component: HomeComponent },
  { path: 'about', component: AboutComponent },
  { path: 'contact', component: ContactComponent },
  { path: '**', component: NotFoundComponent }
];

In the above example, we have defined four routes: Home, About, Contact, and NotFound. Here, 'path: '**'' is a wildcard route that gets matched when the requested URL doesn't match any defined paths.

How to navigate programmatically in Angular?

Angular Router provides several ways to programmatically navigate within your application. You can use the following methods to navigate programmatically:

• routerLink directive: The 'routerLink' directive is used to navigate to a specific route when the user clicks a link.
• router.navigate(): The 'router.navigate()' method is used to navigate to a specific route programmatically.
• router.navigateByUrl(): The 'router.navigateByUrl()' method is used to navigate to a specific URL programmatically.

Here is an example of using routerLink directive:

<nav>
  <a routerLink="/">Home</a>
  <a routerLink="/about">About</a>
  <a routerLink="/contact">Contact</a>
</nav>

In the above example, we have used the routerLink directive to navigate to a specific route when the user clicks a link.

Here is an example of using router.navigate() method:

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

constructor(private router: Router) { }

navigateToAbout() {
  this.router.navigate(['/about']);
}

In the above example, we have injected the Router service into our component and used the navigate() method to navigate to the 'about' route programmatically.

Tips for designing navigation in your app

Here are some tips for designing navigation in your Angular app:

• Keep it simple: Navigation should be simple and intuitive. Limit the number of links in the navigation menu.
• Use hierarchy: Use hierarchical navigation to group related pages together. This helps users to navigate more quickly and easily.
• Highlight the active item: The active item in the navigation menu should be highlighted to show the user where they are on the site.
• Use breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs provide context to the user and help them navigate to higher-level pages.
• Use meaningful URL: Use meaningful and descriptive URLs that make sense to the user.
• Make it responsive: Design the navigation menu to be responsive for small screens like mobile devices.

Conclusion

Designing navigation is an important aspect of any application, and Angular Router is a powerful tool that can help you to create user-friendly and intuitive navigation. In this article, we have covered the basics of Angular Router and provided some tips for designing navigation in your app. If you keep these tips in mind, you can create a seamless and smooth navigation experience for your users.