ngRoute clashing route resolution

[mchapman]

I have an issue where modules are being loaded after the module I have control of that are adding clashing routes.

So something along the lines of:

myModule.config($routeProvider) {
  $routeProvider.when(':model',{templateUrl: 'partials/showItemsInModel.htm'})
}

theirModule.config($routeProvider) {
  $routeProvider.when('dashboard',{templateUrl: 'partials/dashboard.htm'})
}

Obviously I can change my route (and am doing so for the time being), but I wondered if something else could be done, and thought of three possibilities:

• Add an optional sort order causing .when to insert into the route array at the appropriate place
• Have a .else (or .elsewhen) which has an implicit sort order between .when and .otherwise
• Once the route has been matched carry on matching looking for a 'better' match (a regex with less variables). I think it may be possible to automatically insert general routes below less general routes that they would match (but I haven't worked on it).

I could work on a PR if this was deemed to be worthwhile and there was some guidance about which option (if any) was preferred.

[Narretz]

That is a pretty interesting case, because usually third party modules don't add routes to an app, but rather components (directives, services). I think it's a pretty rare occurence and might live in a third-party module that is ngRoute compatible but is extended to handle this case (You can of course open a PR and present it for review.). I'd prefer the third case which orders the routes automatically from explicit to less explicit.

[Narretz]

This is out of scope at this point of AngularJS development. uiRouter has better support for clashing routes and should be used if this is needed.