AngularJS and Express Routing issue

Question

I'm using AngularJS and ExpressJS and having an issue with routing. I saw many other posts but none of those solutions seemed to work. Here is my routes in Express:

module.exports = function(app, auth) {
    //Api routes
    var mycontroller = require('../app/controllers/mycontroller');
    app.get('/api/dostuff/:id', mycontroller.getBlockByHash);

    //Home route
    app.get("/", function(req, res) {
      res.render('index');
    });
  };

When I go to my root / , everything works as expected. ExpressJS serves up my index and angular picks up the rest. When I click a link /blocks , it works as expected since AngularJS picks up the route. But when I refresh, I get a 404 not found error.

I tried app.get('*' instead, but that gives me a completely different error where nothing loads.

I'm using Jade to create the basic page structure with Express. My Express config is:

app.use(express.favicon());
app.use(express.static(config.root + '/public'));

Answer 1

When using html5Mode the documentation says:

Using this mode requires URL rewriting on server side, basically you have to rewrite all your links to entry point of your application (eg index.html)

What it doesn't mention is:

• You should exclude static assets like scripts/styles/images/fonts etc.
• You should also exclude your Restful API .

Your case:

The error you got there is express serving html into script tags and the browser fails to parse them as a valid javascript.

Use express.static to serve static assets and then use app.get('*', for redirecting all other requests to your angular.js entry point (index.html).

express.js middleware order do counts!

• express.static must be declared before app.router
• Node.js / Express.js - How does app.router work?