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Angular Routing - Best Practices for Enterprise Applications

Before We Get Started

This article is not intended to be a tutorial on routing in Angular. If you are new to Routing in Angular then I highly recommend you check out one of the the following resources:

Background

The following represents a pattern that I’ve developed at my day job after building several enterprise Angular applications. While most online tutorials do a great job laying out the fundamentals, I had a hard time locating articles that showed recommended conventions and patterns for large and scalable applications.

With this pattern you should have a clean and concise organization for all routing related concerns in your applications.

Prerequisites

For context, this article assumes you are using the following version of Angular:

  • Angular v7.2.6

Best Practice #1 - Create a top-level Routes array file

The official Angular docs recommend creating a full-blown app-routing.module.ts for your top-level routing. I have found this extra layer to be unnecessary in most cases.

Let’s go with the following approach:

  1. Create a new file named app.routes.ts in the root src/app directory. This file will hold our top-level Routes array. We will come back later throughout the article and fill this in. For now, let’s scaffold it with the following contents:

HOT TIP: Only register top-level routes here, if you plan to implement feature modules, then the child routes would live underneath the respective feature.routes.ts file. We want to keep this top-level routes file as clean as possible and follow the component tree structure.

import { Routes } from '@angular/router';

export const AppRoutes: Routes = [];
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  1. Register AppRoutes in the app.module.ts file.
  • Import AppRoutes from app.routes.ts.
  • Import RouterModule from @angular/router.
  • Add RouterModule.forRoot(AppRoutes) to your imports array

Your updated app.module.ts will look similar to the following:

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { RouterModule } from '@angular/router';
import { AppComponent } from './app.component';
import { AppRoutes } from './app.routes';

@NgModule({
  declarations: [AppComponent],
  imports: [BrowserModule, RouterModule.forRoot(AppRoutes)],
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule {}
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Best Practice #2 - Create a feature-level Routes array file

In similar fashion to how we constructed the app.routes.ts we will create a feature.routes.ts to list out the individual routes for this feature module. We want to keep our routes as close to the source as possible. This will be in keeping with a clean code approach, and having a good separation of concerns.

  1. Create a new file named feature/feature.routes.ts where feature matches the name of your feature.module.ts prefix. This file will hold our feature-level Routes array. Keeping in mind that you would replace Feature with the actual name of your module, let’s scaffold it with the following contents:
import { Routes } from '@angular/router';

export const FeatureRoutes: Routes = [];
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  1. Register FeatureRoutes in the feature/feature.module.ts file. We will make use of the RouterModule.forChild import so that these routes are automatically registered with lazy loading.
  • Import FeatureRoutes from feature.routes.ts.
  • Import RouterModule from @angular/router.
  • Add RouterModule.forChild(FeatureRoutes) to your imports array

Your updated feature/feature.module.ts will look similar to the following:

import { CommonModule } from '@angular/common';
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { RouterModule } from '@angular/router';
import { FeatureRoutes } from './feature.routes';

@NgModule({
  declarations: [],
  imports: [CommonModule, RouterModule.forChild(FeatureRoutes)]
})
export class FeatureModule {}
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An example of a feature.routes.ts file with child route(s) may look like the following:

import { Routes } from '@angular/router';
import { FeatureOneComponent } from './feature-one.component';
import { FeatureSpecificCanActivateGuard } from './_guards';

export const FeatureOneRoutes: Routes = [
  {
    path: '',
    component: FeatureOneComponent,
    canActivate: [FeatureSpecificCanActivateGuard]
  }
];
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Best Practice #3 - Add Lazy Loaded Features to top-level Routes file

Lazy loading is the concept of deferring load of code assets (javascript, styles) until the user actually needs to utilize the resources. This can bring large performance increases to perceived load times of your application as the entire code set doesn’t have to download on first paint.

Angular provides a nice way to handle this with the loadChildren option for a given route. More information can be found in the official Angular docs.

Once you’ve created your app.routes.ts and *.routes.ts files, you need to register any feature modules that you want to load lazily.

Per Feature Module…

Update the AppRoutes array in the app.routes.ts file to include a new route the feature:

import { Routes } from '@angular/router';

export const AppRoutes: Routes = [
  {
    path: 'feature',
    loadChildren: './feature/feature.module#FeatureModule'
  }
];
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By adding the above route to the array, when the user requests /feature in the browser, Angular lazy loads the module using the path given and then automatically registers any routes defined in the feature.routes.ts FeatureRoutes array using the RouterModule.forChild import.

For each additional feature module, you would add another item to the AppRoutes array. If you have multiple features, it might look something like the following:

import { Routes } from '@angular/router';

export const AppRoutes: Routes = [
  {
    path: '',
    pathMatch: 'full',
    redirectTo: 'feature-one'
  },
  {
    path: 'feature-one',
    loadChildren: './feature-one/feature-one.module#FeatureOneModule'
  },
  {
    path: 'feature-two',
    loadChildren: './feature-two/feature-two.module#FeatureTwoModule'
  }
];
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Best Practice #4 - Keep Router Guards Organized

Here are a few tips to keep your router guards organized. These are just guidelines, but I have found them to be very helpful.

Name Your Guards Well

Guards should use the following naming convention:

  • File Name: name.function.guard.ts
  • Class Name: NameFunctionGuard

Each part being identified as:

  • name - this is the name of your guard. What are you guarding against?
  • function - this is the function your guard will be attached to. Angular supports CanActivate, CanActivateChild, CanDeactivate, and Resolve.

An example of an Auth Guard that is attached to the CanActivate function would be named as follows:

  • File Name: auth.can-activate.guard
  • Class Name: AuthCanActivateGuard

Group under _guards folder

Notice the underscore "_" prefix on the folder, this is just for sorting purposes in the editor. I always want these folders to show at the top. I do the same for _models and _services.

Organize all top-level guards under a folder named src/app/_guards. I have seen applications where guards are stored in the top level directory. I am not a fan of this approach as it can get messy if you end up with more than a few guards.

Use Barrel Exports

The jury is still out on whether or not using barrel exports is officially considered a "best practice" or even supported by the Angular style guide. However, I am a big fan of the clean organization this provides. This method is offered as a suggestion.

Make sure that src/app/_guards has a nice and clean index.ts barrel export. Barrel exports are simply index.ts files that group together and export all public files from a directory. An example is as follows:

export * from './auth.can-activate.guard';
export * from './require-save.can-deactivate.guard';
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Without Barrel Exporting:

import { AuthCanActivateGuard } from 'src/app/_guards/auth.can-activate.guard';
import { RequireSaveCanDeactivateGuard } from 'src/app/_guards/require-save.can-deactivate.guard';
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With Barrel Exporting:

import { AuthCanActivateGuard, RequireSaveCanDeactivateGuard } from 'src/app/_guards';

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An example application with a _guards directory would look as follows:

Organize Feature-Specific Route Guards

If you have guards that are only used in a particular FeatureRoutes array, then store these routes underneath a folder named _guards underneath your feature folder. Make sure to follow the same naming conventions defined above, as well as barrel exporting.

  • Place guards under a folder named _guards underneath your feature folder
  • Make sure to create a barrel export index.ts for clean importing

An example feature directory with _guards would look as follows:

Finished Application Structure

A completed application structure should look something like the following:


Example GitHub Repository

I have created a demonstration repository on GitHub. Feel free to fork, clone, and submit PRs.

https://github.com/wesleygrimes/angular-routing-best-practices

Conclusion

It’s important to remember that I have implemented these best practices in several “real world” applications. While I have found these best practices helpful, and maintainable, I do not believe they are an end-all be-all solution to organizing routes in projects; it’s just what has worked for me. I am curious as to what you all think? Please feel free to offer any suggestions, tips, or best practices you’ve learned when building enterprise Angular applications with routing and I will update the article to reflect as such.

Happy Coding!

Top comments (7)

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michaeljota profile image
Michael De Abreu

I'm surprise for this recommendations. There are not only against the Angular Style Guide, but it require extra work from your team if you are using Angular CLI, or any UI that uses the CLI underneath. I would like to give my feedback about this, I hope you don't mind.

I find the router module to be very useful, you could even use it for the components that you are routing, as they are not supposed to be used else where.

Guards are just another kind of services, and thus they should be placed in the CoreModule, if you are using them as app wide services. I do like the idea of placing feature specific guards aside that feature module. However, if you place them all in CoreModule, you can use them in any part of the application, even in features modules.

In the same order of ideas, barrer files are discourage by the Angular Team, but for a good reason: They are not good for tree shaking. Also, they could produce circular dependency errors, but this is really unlikely.

Finally, and I guess this would be the most banal feedback, I wouldn't name a folder with a leading underscore, but I understand that with this you can find those folders better.

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wesgrimes profile image
Wes

Thanks for the feedback Michael. I appreciate your opinion! It is always great to get feedback on articles that I write.

The concepts laid out in my article are recommendations and preferences. I realize others may not wish to implement ideas in the same manner, and that's OK.

I use the Angular CLI exclusively and these best practices work great with the CLI.

That being said, I would like to counter your claims with the following:

  • On Barrel index.ts exports: John Papa and Todd Motto both use barrel exports heavily, it's where I got the idea from. You can see their repos here using barrels: github.com/johnpapa/heroes-angular... and Todd's tweet for reference: twitter.com/toddmotto/status/91881...

  • On Folders with leading underscore: This is just a recommendation, and it works fantastic for my team. I have not run across any negative consequences from this. It's quite common out in the wild with several high starred github repos using this.

  • On Guards - I agree they are a type of service, but they have very unique use-cases, and can only be used directly with route definition. This is why I store them close to the source of use.

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michaeljota profile image
Michael De Abreu

I have admiration for both, but I also have found that this patterns doesn't fit with Angular very well. They are more like React, or Vue. You can use them, but they don't fit. I don't know if I explain myself. However, it's like you said, sometimes, sometimes not.

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wesgrimes profile image
Wes

Well thanks again for your feedback! Would love to see how you’re building Angular apps for comparison sake. Maybe I’m missing something. If you haven’t already, how about writing an article?

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michaeljota profile image
Michael De Abreu

Sure do. I have already write a couple, but nothing specific to organization structure, as I have found the Angular Style Guide a really good approach to manage. I have work in a couple of projects with Angular, and in all of them we always followed the ASG. Sometimes we add something, or adjust something, but it would still the recommended structure.

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wesgrimes profile image
Wes

That’s great! I am a big fan of the style guide. I use it as a base for most things, but I do on occasion break from the norm where it makes sense for my team and our deliverables. Have a great day!

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wesgrimes profile image
Wes

And again thanks for the feedback. I always appreciate it! Hope you’re having a great day!