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href causes unintended page reload with Angularjs and Twitter Bootstrap

I am working on a project that uses Angularjs and Twitter Bootstrap.

Bootstrap uses # to toggle components such as popover, modal etc. for example:

<a href="#myModal" role="button" class="btn" data-toggle="modal">Launch demo modal</a>

<!-- Modal -->
<div id="myModal" class="modal hide fade" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="myModalLabel" aria-hidden="true">
  <div class="modal-header">
    <button type="button" class="close" data-dismiss="modal" aria-hidden="true">×</button>
    <h3 id="myModalLabel">Modal header</h3>
  </div>
  <div class="modal-body">
    <p>One fine body…</p>
  </div>
  <div class="modal-footer">
    <button class="btn" data-dismiss="modal" aria-hidden="true">Close</button>
    <button class="btn btn-primary">Save changes</button>
  </div>
</div>

The problem is when I click on button with such href attribute, it causes full page reload, which means, everything in current page is lost. Is there a way to prevent this?

some extra info:

when i hover on the button, the url is weird. for example, my current page's url is

localhost:8080/#/account

the button's href is

href="#myModal"

I expect to see url

localhost:8080/#/account#myModal

However, what I see is 

localhost:8080/#myModal

I am not sure if this is related to my problem.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT 1

I have seen the other post that Stewie talked about. It explains html5mode and hashbang in angularjs, but it doesn't really solve my problem.

I tried putting html5mode, and it still reloads the page when i click on the button

Solution

  • The hashbang in Angular is used for routing. Look at the tutorial for a deeper insight into how it works here.

    You should also take a look at Angular UI Bootstrap.

    Regular Boostrap wasn't built with Angular in mind, so there are few things that aren't in line with Angular. So the team decided to port Boostrap into Angular directives, giving you the ability to fully use Angular's ng- features (which you wouldn't be able to do easily with just regular Boostrap).

    Due to the way routing works, I don't think you would be able to do what you want, and you shouldn't need to. Since you're using the <a> as a button, make it a regular button and add an ng-click:

    <button class="btn btn-primary" ng-click="openDialog()">Open Dialog</button>

    This is the Angular way (and how Angular UI Bootstrap works).

    Lastly, in Angular, the <a> is a directive docs here, so if you want to prevent the default click, leave href="":

    <a href="" ng-click="model.$save()">Save</a>