Introducing the Angular router
In traditional web applications, when we wanted to change from one view to another, we needed to request a new page from the server. The browser would create a URL for the view and send it to the server. The browser would then reload the page as soon as the client received a response. It was a process that resulted in round trip time delays and a bad user experience for our applications:
Figure 9.1: Routing in traditional web applications
Modern web applications using JavaScript frameworks such as Angular follow a different approach. They handle changes between views or components on the client side without bothering the server. They contact the server once during bootstrapping to get the main HTML file. The router on the client intercepts and handles any subsequent URL changes. These applications are called Single-Page Applications (SPAs) because they do not cause a full reload of a page:
Figure 9.2: SPA architecture
The Angular...
