Matching strategies

By default the router checks if the URL starts with the path property of a route, that is, it checks if the URL is prefixed with the path. This is an implicit default, but we can set this strategy explicitly, as follows:

// identical to {path: 'a', component: ComponentA}

{path : 'a' , pathMatch:'prefix',component: ComponentA}

The router supports a second matching strategy-full, which checks that the path is "equal" to what is left in the URL. This is mostly important for redirects. To see why, let's look at this example:

[
  { path: '', redirectTo: '/inbox' },
  {
    path: ':folder',
    children: [
      ...
    ]
  }
]

Because the default matching strategy is prefix, and any URL starts with an empty string, the router will always match the first route. Even if we navigate to /inbox, the router will apply the first redirect. Our intent, however, is to match the second route when navigating to /inbox, and redirect to /inbox...