ui-sref initialze controller twice if url has params

[ruslansavenok]

Using ui-router v0.2.11

My Html

<li ui-sref-active="active">
  <a ui-sref="flash_lessons">Flash Lessons</a>
</li>
<li ui-sref-active="active">
  <a ui-sref="lessons">Lessons</a>
</li>

My coffee

$stateProvider
      .state 'flash_lessons',
        url: '/flash_lessons/:level_name'
        controller: () ->
          console.log 'will call me 2 times'

      .state 'lessons',
        url: '/lessons/'
        templateUrl: '/views/lessons/list.html'
        controller: 'LessonsListCtrl'

Opening lessons state, and then going to flash_lessons using ui-sref="flash_lessons" will initialize controller twice.

[nateabele]

Please test this against the latest release.

[ruslansavenok]

@nateabele tested on 0.2.12-pr1 with angular 1.2.26, same result.

Made a demo - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18659172/angular-ui-router-bug/index.html

• zip file with demo- https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18659172/angular-ui-router-bug/angular-ui-router-bug.zip

[nateabele]

Ah okay, maybe I was wrong about it already being out in a release. @christopherthielen can you weigh in here?

[christopherthielen]

I believe this is fixed in master, but not 0.2.12-pre1

[ruslansavenok]

@christopherthielen my initial bug report was about version 0.2.11 which is current master state. I will prepare demo using 0.2.11 today

[christopherthielen]

Master needs to be built manually.

[ruslansavenok]

@christopherthielen just made 2 builds with 'grunt build' (for master & master-0.2.12-pr1).

Both of them has that bug. Updated demo & zip file are located on prev links.

[christopherthielen]

Thanks I'll look at this early next week

[ognus]

Came across this bug as well, ui-router 0.2.11 and angularjs 1.3.2. From my observations, a controller is called twice only when the url parameter is defined but not passed in ui-sref (a.k.a optional route parameters), exactly like in @ruslansavenok's example.

[christopherthielen]

@ognus thanks that helps.

The first transition via ui-sref="lessons" calls $state.go('lessons', undefined). This updates the URL to /lessons/. Then, the $locationChangeSuccess handler kicks in and matches /lessons/ to lessons {param_name: ""}, then calls $state.go('lessons', {param_name: ""}). Since the parameter has changed from undefined to "", the controller is re-invoked.

I'm wondering why we allow transitions when the required parameters are not provided. I have a TODO somewhere about aborting transitions when non-optional parameters are not provided.

[ruslansavenok]

So the solution for now is to pass that argument as an empty string, works for my case :)

Thx @ognus @christopherthielen

[christopherthielen]

Note: 0.2.12 is coming in the next few days (unless I find any other show stoppers). 0.2.12 will allow you to specify { param_name: "" } if you want the empty string as the default param value. Build from master if you want this now.

[ognus]

@christopherthielen briliiant! thank you for that. Thanks @ruslansavenok for hack suggestion, works fine for me as well and will probably stick with just passing empty string till 0.2.12 release.

[christopherthielen]

I've decided that 0.2.12 will continue to map undefined path parameters as an empty string, like it has done since at least 0.2.0. 0.3.0 will error if you try to transition without all required parameters.

http://plnkr.co/edit/RbPLBCVxNWdpIvJVlqId?p=preview