How to create nested routes with Angular?

Learn how nested (child) routes work in Angular, why multiple router outlets are useful, and how to implement tabbed navigation in complex dashboards.

Nested routes, or child routes, can be used when multiple router outlets are present in an Angular application. Why would we have multiple router outlets in the first place? Let’s take an example.

Say you have an application with multiple screens (pages) that you can navigate to. One of these screens is a complex dashboard that includes a section with tabs. You could use the router to implement navigation within those tabs, using nested routes.

This means we have a main router outlet as follows in the App component:

      <div>
  <button type="button" routerLink=""><< Menu</button>
</div>

And then, in our dashboard component, which would get displayed in the above router outlet, we’d have a second router outlet to handle our tabs:

      <div class="tabs-container">
  <div class="tabs">
    <a routerLink="tab1" routerLinkActive="active">Tab 1</a>
    <a routerLink="tab2" routerLinkActive="active">Tab 2</a>
    <a routerLink="tab3" routerLinkActive="active">Tab 3</a>
  </div>

  <div class="tab-content">
    <router-outlet></router-outlet>
  </div>
</div>

The router config looks like this — using the children section for nested / child routing:

       {
    path: 'tabs', 
    component: TabsComponent,
    children: [
      { path: '', redirectTo: 'tab1', pathMatch: 'full' },
      { path: 'tab1', component: Tab1Component },
      { path: 'tab2', component: Tab2Component },
      { path: 'tab3', component: Tab3Component }
    ]
  }

That config means that if the browser URL becomes /tabs, the TabComponent is displayed in the main router outlet, and the Tab1Component is displayed in the router outlet of TabComponent, because the empty child path redirects to /tab1, which then renders Tab1Component.

Then, if the browser URL becomes /tabs/tab3, the TabComponent is still displayed in the main router outlet, and Tab3Component is displayed in the router outlet of TabComponent.

This has three important benefits:

You can create links that navigate to a specific tab or sub-section of any given screen
Since the current “tab” depends on the URL, switching tabs can be done using the browser’s previous/next buttons. A full page refresh would display the same tab selected.
A URL can be bookmarked to display the application in the same state with the same tab selected.

You can see the code of my example on Stackblitz here.

How to create nested routes with Angular?

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