refreshing the page results in 404 error- Angular 6

Question

I am building an application with the help of Angular6 and facing problems in routing. All the routes are working when I click on a particular tab but whenever I refresh the current page, it is throwing 404 error. I have seen many posts regarding this issue on Stack overflow but failed to overcome from this problem.

Below is my app.module.ts

import {BrowserModule} from '@angular/platform-browser';
import {NgModule} from '@angular/core';
import {RouterModule, Routes} from '@angular/router';
import {AppComponent} from './app.component';
import {FetchApiComponent} from './fetch-api/fetch-api.component';
import {FormsModule} from '@angular/forms';
import {HttpClientModule} from '@angular/common/http';
import {UserServiceLatest} from './fetch-latest/app.service';
import {UserServiceTop} from './fetch-top/app.service';
import {YoutubePlayerModule} from 'ngx-youtube-player';
import {SidebarComponent} from './sidebar/sidebar.component';
import {FetchLatestComponent} from './fetch-latest/fetch-latest.component';
import { FetchTopComponent } from './fetch-top/fetch-top.component'
import {UserService} from './fetch-api/app.service';
import { ServiceWorkerModule } from '@angular/service-worker';
import { environment } from '../environments/environment';
import { AngularFireModule } from 'angularfire2';
import * as firebase from 'firebase';
import { firebaseConfig } from './../environments/firebase.config';
import { AngularFireDatabaseModule } from 'angularfire2/database';
import {PushService} from './push.service';

const appRoutes: Routes = [
  {
    path: '',

  component: FetchApiComponent
  }, 
{
    path: '/latest',

    component: FetchLatestComponent
  },
{
    path: '/top',

    component: FetchTopComponent
  },
{
path :'*',
component: FetchApiComponent 
}

];

firebase.initializeApp(firebaseConfig);

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent,
    FetchApiComponent,SidebarComponent, FetchLatestComponent, FetchTopComponent
  ],
  imports: [
    RouterModule.forRoot(appRoutes),
    BrowserModule, YoutubePlayerModule,
    FormsModule,
    AngularFireModule.initializeApp(firebaseConfig),
    AngularFireDatabaseModule,environment.production ?ServiceWorkerModule.register('firebase-messaging-sw.js'):[],ServiceWorkerModule.register('/firebase-messaging-sw.js', { enabled: environment.production }),
    HttpClientModule,environment.production ? ServiceWorkerModule.register('ngsw-worker.js') : [], ServiceWorkerModule.register('/ngsw-worker.js', { enabled: environment.production })
  ],
  providers: [UserService,UserServiceTop,UserServiceLatest,PushService],

  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule {}

Can you point me in right direction?

Answer 1

You will see in your example url, that once you get the 404 error you can't make it work, but if you include a hash before the angular-specific url like /#latest it will work.

Why stops working when refreshing? your webserver is intercepting the GET request from your browser and is trying to go directly to the directory /latest, which doesn't exist. It doesn't know that it needs to go to /bosv2, find an angular app, and then add the small ending bit to your path which is a not-real directory but a routing for angular. In your local it would work as when you are doing ng serve, webpack webserver is prepared for this, but not the host where you are hosting the app.

By default, angular is using HTML5 style navigation, but with your current webserver settings you would need the old angularjs style (with hash#).

From here, you have two solutions:

1. Change your webserver configuration

2. Tell Angular to use HashLocationStrategy (perfectly valid solution), you can go old-school with the HashLocationStrategy by providing the useHash: true in an object as the second argument of the RouterModule.forRoot in the AppModule.

   @NgModule({ imports: [ ... RouterModule.forRoot(routes, { useHash: true }) // .../#/latest/ ], ...

I would say going the hash style has a couple of downsides, which may not be relevant in your scenario:

1. It doesn't produce the clean and SEO Friendly URLs that are easier for users to understand and remember.
2. You can't take advantage of the server-side rendering.

Hope you find this answer helpful :)