Getting 404 page on page refresh using node and angular app

Question

I am new in Angular. I tried to create a CRUD operation using Nodejs and Angular. I am using Nodejs and Express for backed and Angular for frontend.

When I navigate on page using routerLink its work fine, but when I navigate on the page and then I refresh the page it shows a page not found error.

I know what happened there, the route is not defined in the Express app so I refresh the page it shows the 404 error.

How do I make this work with Angular and Express routes?

Here is my code.

app.js ( Server )

const express = require('express');
const path = require('path');
const http = require('http');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var app = express();


app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({extended : false}));
app.use(bodyParser.json());

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname,'dist/MEAN-blog')));


app.get('/',(req,res) =>{
    res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname,'dist/MEAN-blog/index.html'));
});

app.post('/register',(req,res) =>{
    var u = new User(req.body);
    u.save();
    res.send(u).status(200);
})


var server  = http.createServer(app);

server.listen(8080,'0.0.0.0',() =>{
    console.log('Server is running on 8080');
})

Here is the routes of angular

const routes: Routes = [
    {
        path : '',
        component : PostsComponent
    },
    {
        path : 'users',
        component : UsersComponent
    },
    {
        path : 'users/:id',
        component : UsersComponent
    },
    {
        path : 'post/:id',
        component : PostDetailsComponent
    },
    {
        path : 'login',
        component : LoginComponent
    },
    {
        path : 'signup',
        component : SignupComponent
    },

];

@NgModule({
  imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)],
  exports: [RouterModule]
})
export class AppRoutingModule { }

I am using angular 5

how can i solve this issue ?

Thanks

Answer 1

Usually what I do is include all my api endpoints first, and then at the end add this

app.get('*',(req,res) =>{
    res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname,'dist/MEAN-blog/index.html'));
});

This way any endpoint that isn't /api will return index.html and angular routing will take over from there.

Another alternative is using SSR but its kind of a pain.