How to route in angular 4

Sometimes there could be that you don't have access to the server configuration. There is another possible solution to this.

In the import of the RouterModule where there is something like:

RouterModule.forRoot( routes )

You can add the useHash this way:

RouterModule.forRoot( routes, { useHash: true } )

then rebuild your project with the production flag and the URLs now will be like:

http://yourserver/#/page1/

this way, thanks to the hash, the app will work without any problems and the only thing needed is setting the useHash on the RouterModule and rebuilding your app.

The rewrite rules are good but I think it is good having more options.

As of Apache version 2.2.16, you can use the FallbackResource directive for this:

<Directory "/var/www/my_blog">
  FallbackResource index.php
</Directory>

Check https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/rewrite/remapping.html#fallback-resource

It is not an Angular issue. It is a problem with your apache settings. When you are using HTML5 mode(pretty url) in Angular, you will have to config your Apache to send all request where the resource doesn't exist on the server to the index.html file.

This can be done with the following .htaccess configuration:

RewriteEngine On  
# If an existing asset or directory is requested go to it as it is
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

# If the requested resource doesn't exist, use index.html
RewriteRule ^ /index.html

The reason is that when you try to access /route-a, the apache server will be default try to find the directory route-a and the index.html file within. But because you do not have that directory, will apache return a 404 error.

But by telling apache, that on any request where the location or file do not exist. To send send your Angular html file indsted, will the Angular router take it from there.