258

Is it possible to remove the # symbol from angular.js URLs?

I still want to be able to use the browser's back button, etc, when I change the view and will update the URL with params, but I don't want the # symbol.

The tutorial routeProvider is declared as follows:

angular.module('phonecat', []). config(['$routeProvider', function($routeProvider) { $routeProvider. when('/phones', {templateUrl: 'partials/phone-list.html', controller: PhoneListCtrl}). when('/phones/:phoneId', {templateUrl: 'partials/phone-detail.html', controller: PhoneDetailCtrl}). otherwise({redirectTo: '/phones'}); }]);

Can I edit this to have the same functionality without the #?

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4
  • 13
    hashtag nice one Commented Dec 27, 2014 at 13:50
  • stackoverflow.com/questions/14319967/… Commented Jan 9, 2015 at 8:19
  • For me all the answer here are wrong. We can "rewrite" the url and remove the #, but never access directly to the webpage without #. Any real solution here ??? Commented Oct 3, 2016 at 12:52
  • Here is the solution if you are using Angular 1.6. Commented Mar 24, 2017 at 9:37

14 Answers 14

Reset to default
254

Yes, you should configure $locationProvider and set html5Mode to true:

angular.module('phonecat', []). config(['$routeProvider', '$locationProvider', function($routeProvider, $locationProvider) { $routeProvider. when('/phones', {templateUrl: 'partials/phone-list.html', controller: PhoneListCtrl}). when('/phones/:phoneId', {templateUrl: 'partials/phone-detail.html', controller: PhoneDetailCtrl}). otherwise({redirectTo: '/phones'}); $locationProvider.html5Mode(true); }]);
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24 Comments

Because IE lt 10 doesn't support html5 history API which were enabled by setting up html5Mode(true). In IE you have to use # in routes.
@powtac IE lt 10 means Internet Explorer less then version 10
Can you set it so this fallsback to using # in IE? Is it as simple as just wrapping $locationProvider.html5Mode(true); in if !(IE lt 10) ?
So this solution does solve removing the hashtag in the url given the url has a hashtag, however it doesn't solve how to respond to requests that doesn't want the hashtag to be included in the first place. Aka, it solves blah/#/phones -> blah/phones but it doesn't handle blah/phones directly.
I needed to put <base href="/" /> in my index.html <head> section.
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56

Be sure to check browser support for the html5 history API:

 if(window.history && window.history.pushState){ $locationProvider.html5Mode(true); }
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3 Comments

This might be better suited as a comment as it doesn't directly answer the question.
According to the developer guide, this detection is done automatically: If the HTML5 History API is not supported by a browser, the $location service will fall back to using the hashbang URLs automatically
Worked like a charm, and I appreciate method checking rather than browser version checking--future proof.
47

To remove the Hash tag for a pretty URL and also for your code to work after minification you need to structure your code like the example below:

jobApp.config(['$routeProvider','$locationProvider', function($routeProvider, $locationProvider) { $routeProvider. when('/', { templateUrl: 'views/job-list.html', controller: 'JobListController' }). when('/menus', { templateUrl: 'views/job-list.html', controller: 'JobListController' }). when('/menus/:id', { templateUrl: 'views/job-detail.html', controller: 'JobDetailController' }); //you can include a fallback by including .otherwise({ //redirectTo: '/jobs' //}); //check browser support if(window.history && window.history.pushState){ //$locationProvider.html5Mode(true); will cause an error $location in HTML5 mode requires a tag to be present! Unless you set baseUrl tag after head tag like so: <head> <base href="/"> // to know more about setting base URL visit: https://docs.angularjs.org/error/$location/nobase // if you don't wish to set base URL then use this $locationProvider.html5Mode({ enabled: true, requireBase: false }); } }]);
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2 Comments

For the requireBase: false +1
Hello @digitlimit, After adding $locationProvider.html5Mode code my code $urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/home'); stopped working.
18

I write out a rule in web.config after $locationProvider.html5Mode(true) is set in app.js.

Hope, helps someone out.

 <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="AngularJS" stopProcessing="true"> <match url=".*" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll"> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /> <add input="{REQUEST_URI}" pattern="^/(api)" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Rewrite" url="/" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer>

In my index.html I added this to <head>

<base href="/">

Don't forget to install url rewriter for iis on server.

Also if you use Web Api and IIS, this match url will not work out, as it will change your api calls. So add third input(third line of condition) and give out a pattern that will exclude calls from www.yourdomain.com/api

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1 Comment

How do you install url rewriter for IIS? I'm hosting on Azure.
11

If you are in .NET stack with MVC with AngularJS, this is what you have to do to remove the '#' from url:

  1. Set up your base href in your _Layout page: <head> <base href="/"> </head>

  2. Then, add following in your angular app config : $locationProvider.html5Mode(true)

  3. Above will remove '#' from url but page refresh won't work e.g. if you are in "yoursite.com/about" page refreash will give you a 404. This is because MVC does not know about angular routing and by MVC pattern it will look for a MVC page for 'about' which does not exists in MVC routing path. Workaround for this is to send all MVC page request to a single MVC view and you can do that by adding a route that catches all

url: 

routes.MapRoute( name: "App", url: "{*url}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" } );
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2 Comments

Which file should I add the routes.MapRoute?
RouteConfig.cs its under App_Start folder
6

You can tweak the html5mode but that is only functional for links included in html anchors of your page and how the url looks like in the browser address bar. Attempting to request a subpage without the hashtag (with or without html5mode) from anywhere outside the page will result in a 404 error. For example, the following CURL request will result in a page not found error, irrespective of html5mode:

$ curl http://foo.bar/phones

although the following will return the root/home page:

$ curl http://foo.bar/#/phones

The reason for this is that anything after the hashtag is stripped off before the request arrives at the server. So a request for http://foo.bar/#/portfolio arrives at the server as a request for http://foo.bar. The server will respond with a 200 OK response (presumably) for http://foo.bar and the agent/client will process the rest.

So in cases that you want to share a url with others, you have no option but to include the hashtag.

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1 Comment

Is there no way around this? This is a pretty big issue.
5

Follow 2 steps-
1. First set the $locationProvider.html5Mode(true) in your app config file.
For eg -
angular.module('test', ['ui.router']) .config(function($stateProvider, $urlRouterProvider, $locationProvider) { $locationProvider.html5Mode(true); $urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/'); });

2.Second set the <base> inside your main page.
For eg ->
<base href="/">

The $location service will automatically fallback to the hash-part method for browsers that do not support the HTML5 History API.

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3

My solution is create .htaccess and use #Sorian code.. without .htaccess I failed to remove #

RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(/index\.php|/img|/js|/css|/robots\.txt|/favicon\.ico) RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ./index.html [L]
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Comments

1

According to the documentation. You can use:

$locationProvider.html5Mode(true).hashPrefix('!');

NB: If your browser does not support to HTML 5. Dont worry :D it have fallback to hashbang mode. So, you don't need to check with if(window.history && window.history.pushState){ ... } manually

For example: If you click: <a href="/other">Some URL</a>

In HTML5 Browser: angular will automatically redirect to example.com/other

In Not HTML5 Browser: angular will automatically redirect to example.com/#!/other

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Comments

1

This answer assumes that you are using nginx as reverse proxy and you already did set $locationProvider.html5mode to true.

->For the people who might still be struggling with all cool stuff above.

Surely, @maxim grach solution works fine, but for the solution for how to respond to requests that doesn't want the hashtag to be included in the first place what can be done is check if php is sending 404 and then rewrite the url. Following is the code for nginx,

In the php location, detect 404 php error and redirect to another location, 

location ~ \.php${ ... fastcgi_intercept_errors on; error_page 404 = /redirect/$request_uri ; }

Then rewrite url in redirect location and proxy_pass the data, offcourse, put your website url at the place of my blog's url. (Request : Question this only after you tried it)

location /redirect { rewrite ^/redirect/(.*) /$1; proxy_pass http://www.techromance.com; }

And see the magic.

And it definitely works, atleast for me.

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2 Comments

Where to add this?
Where to add above code? Put them in main Nginx config file.
1

Start from index.html remove all # from <a href="#/aboutus">About Us</a> so it must look like <a href="/aboutus">About Us</a>.Now in head tag of index.html write <base href="/"> just after last meta tag.

Now in your routing js inject $locationProvider and write $locatonProvider.html5Mode(true); Something Like This:-

app.config(function ($routeProvider, $locationProvider) { $routeProvider .when("/home", { templateUrl: "Templates/home.html", controller: "homeController" }) .when("/aboutus",{templateUrl:"Templates/aboutus.html"}) .when("/courses", { templateUrl: "Templates/courses.html", controller: "coursesController" }) .when("/students", { templateUrl: "Templates/students.html", controller: "studentsController" }) $locationProvider.html5Mode(true); });

For more Details watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsRugDQaGOo

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1 Comment

Removing all # Url helped because i was testing it without removing #urls.
1

Guess this is reallllly late for this. But adding the below config to the app.module imports does the job:

RouterModule.forRoot(routes, { useHash: false })
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1 Comment

Question is asked for AnguarJS!
0

Step 1: Inject the $locationProvider service into the app config's constructor

Step 2: Add code line $locationProvider.html5Mode(true) to the app config's constructor.

Step 3: in the container (landing, master, or layout) page, add html tag such as <base href="/"> inside the tag.

Step 4: remove all '#" for routing config from all anchor tags. For examples, href="#home" becomes href="home"; href="#about" becomes herf="about"; href="#contact" becomes href="contact"

 <ul class="nav navbar-nav"> <li><a href="home">Home</a></li> <li><a href="about">About us</a></li> <li><a href="contact">Contact us</a></li> </ul>
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Comments

-1

Just add $locationProvider In

.config(function ($routeProvider,$locationProvider)

and then add $locationProvider.hashPrefix(''); after 

.otherwise({ redirectTo: '/' });

That's it.

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