Angular 5 - redirect page to homepage on browser refresh

Question

Currently, when I refresh a page from a route like

http://localhost:4200/feedback

it stays on the same route. But I want the route to redirect to

http://localhost:4200

I saw people have asked how to implement the refresh to stay on the same route. So I guess, the default angular should redirect to homepage on browser refresh. Any idea why my angular default project does this otherwise?

Below is my AppRoutingModule

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

import { SmileyFeedbackComponent } from '../smiley-feedback/smiley-feedback.component';
import { FeedbackFormComponent } from '../feedback-form/feedback-form.component';
import { ThankYouComponent } from '../thank-you/thank-you.component';

const routes: Routes = [
  { path: '', redirectTo: '/smiley', pathMatch: 'full' },
  { path: 'smiley', component: SmileyFeedbackComponent },
  { path: 'feedback', component: FeedbackFormComponent },
  { path: 'thank-you', component: ThankYouComponent }
];

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

Answer 1

As mentioned by Chris Sharp, your app is doing exactly what it should do, routing to the place that the url is pointing to, since you have not told it otherwise.

What you can do, is that in your app.component you can in OnInit redirect to root. This then means that when app is (re)initialized, you are being redirected to root page.

export class AppComponent { 
  constructor(private router: Router) {}

  ngOnInit() {
    this.router.navigate([''])
  }
}