Angular UI-Router: child using parent's view

Question

In story form:

What I am looking for here is a master-detail setup. The master is in list form and when I click on a link (relative to a particular row/record (or Account in this case)) I want to see the details in the main view (literally, the "main" view: <div class="container" ui-view="main"></div>).

I want to do this and maintain my URL structure (/accounts for the list of Accounts; /accounts/:id for the detailed version) but I want the detail view to use the view that the list was using.

What I currently have

index.html

...
<div class="container" ui-view="main"></div>
...

accounts.js

$stateProvider
    .state ('accounts', {
        url: '/accounts',
        views: {
            'main': {
                controller: 'AccountsCtrl',
                templateUrl: 'accounts/accounts.tpl.html'
            }
        },
        data: { pageTitle: 'Account' }
    })
    .state ('accounts.detail', {
        url: '/:id',
        views: {
            'main': {
                controller: 'AccountDetailCtrl',
                templateUrl: 'accounts/detail.tpl.html'
            }
        },
        data: { pageTitle: 'Account Detail' }
    });

At this point, the /accounts route works as expected. It displays accounts/accounts.tpl.html correctly in the main view. In that html each line in the repeater links it to its appropriate /accounts/:id URL, which I am handling with the nested state accounts.detail.

What is probably obvious to the majority of you who know more than me about this, my accounts.detail will render to the view main if that named view exists in the template accounts/accounts.tpl.html. That is indeed true.

But that is not what I want. I want the accounts.detail stuff to render in the parent main view; I want the html of accounts/detail.tpl.html to replace the html of accounts/accounts.tpl.html found in index.html: <div class="container" ui-view="main"></div>.

So how could I accomplish this?

MY SOLUTION IN CONTEXT The trick is, as the answer says, to set up the URL scheme to identify which child state is "default". The way I interpret this code in plain English is that the parent class is abstract with the proper URL and the "default" child class has the "same" URL (indicated by '').

If you need further clarity, just post a comment and I'll share any more guidance.

.config(function config( $stateProvider ) { $stateProvider
    .state ('accounts', {
        abstract: true,
        url: '/accounts',
        views: {
            'main': {
                templateUrl: 'accounts/accounts.tpl.html',
                controller: 'AccountsCtrl'
            }
        },
        data: { pageTitle: 'Accounts' }
    })
    .state ('accounts.list', {
        url: '',
        views: {
            'main': {
                templateUrl: 'accounts/list.tpl.html',
                controller: 'AccountsListCtrl'
            }
        },
        data: { pageTitle: 'Accounts List' }
    })
    .state ('accounts.detail', {
        url: '/:id',
        views: {
            'main': {
                templateUrl: 'accounts/detail.tpl.html',
                controller: 'AccountDetailCtrl'
            }
        },
        data: { pageTitle: 'Account Detail' }
    });

Answer 1

Sounds like you simply don't want the views to be hierarchical. To do this, simply change the name of the second state to detail.

Note however, that in doing so you will lose any hierarchical properties of the state tree (the controller code state of accounts for example).

If you want to keep the controllers hierarchical, but perform a replace of the html, I would create another parent above both others that takes care of the controller logic, but only has an extremely simple view <div ui-view=""></div>.

For example:

$stateProvider
    .state('app', { url: '', abstract: true, template: 'parent.html', controller: 'ParentCtrl' })
    .state('app.accounts', { url: '/accounts', templateUrl: 'accounts.tpl.html', controller: 'AccountsCtrl' })
    .state('app.detail', { url: '/accounts/:id', templateUrl: 'detail.tpl.html', controller: 'AccountDetailCtrl' });