How to use router.navigateByUrl and router.navigate in Angular

Question

https://angular.io/api/router/RouterLink gives a good overview of how to create links that will take the user to a different route in Angular4, however I can\'t find how to

Answer 1

router.navigate vs router.navigateByUrl

router.navigate is just a convenience method that wraps router.navigateByUrl, it boils down to:

navigate(commands: any[], extras) {
    return router.navigateByUrl(router.createUrlTree(commands, extras), extras);
}

As mentioned in other answers router.navigateByUrl will only accept absolute URLs:

// This will work
router.navigateByUrl("http://localhost/team/33/user/11")
// This WON'T work even though relativeTo parameter is in the signature
router.navigateByUrl("../22", {relativeTo: route})

All the relative calculations are done by router.createUrlTree and router.navigate. Array syntax is used to treat every array element as a URL modifying "command". E.g. ".." - go up, "path" - go down, {expand: true} - add query param, etc.. You can use it like this:

// create /team/33/user/11
router.navigate(['/team', 33, 'user', 11]);

// assuming the current url is `/team/33/user/11` and the route points to `user/11`

// navigate to /team/33/user/11/details
router.navigate(['details'], {relativeTo: route});

// navigate to /team/33/user/22
router.navigate(['../22'], {relativeTo: route});

// navigate to /team/44/user/22
router.navigate(['../../team/44/user/22'], {relativeTo: route});

That {relativeTo: route} parameter is important as that's what router will use as the root for relative operations.

Get it through your component's constructor:

  // In my-awesome.component.ts:

  constructor(private route: ActivatedRoute, private router: Router) {}
  
  // Example call
  onNavigateClick() {
    // Navigates to a parent component
    this.router.navigate([..], { relativeTo: this.route })
  }

routerLink directive

Nicest thing about this directive is that it will retrieve the ActivatedRoute for you. Under the hood it's using already familiar:

router.navigateByUrl(router.createUrlTree(commands, { relativeTo: route }), { relativeTo: route });

Following variants will produce identical result:

[routerLink]="['../..']"

// if the string parameter is passed it will be wrapped into an array
routerLink="../.."