angular 9 candeactivate not working although code seems to be fine and not throwing any error

Question

Hello Guys I am new to Angular and learning the things using the following tutorial link. For some reason the canDeactivate route guard seem to not work. Any help would be appreciated as I tried checking many things but none worked. I have the latest angular CLI and there are not errors in my code and for some reason the canDeactivate function is not at all called during the route change.

I am applying the function on the CreateEmployee route so when I fill the form for createEmployee and I try to navigate to different route then it should kick in.

create-employee-component.html: In this, I have few form elements

<form #employeeForm = "ngForm" (ngSubmit)="saveEmployee()" [ngClass]="{'was-validated': employeeForm.submitted}" novalidate>

create-employee-component.ts

import { Component, OnInit, ViewChild } from '@angular/core';
import { NgForm } from '@angular/forms';
import { Department } from '../models/department.model';
import { BsDatepickerConfig } from 'ngx-bootstrap/datepicker';
import { Employee } from '../models/employee.model';
import { EmployeeService } from './employee.service';
import { Router } from '@angular/router';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-create-employee',
  templateUrl: './create-employee.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./create-employee.component.css']
})
export class CreateEmployeeComponent implements OnInit {
    @ViewChild('employeeForm') public createEmployeeForm: NgForm;
    datePickerConfig: Partial<BsDatepickerConfig>;
    previewPhoto = false;

create-employee-can-deactivate-guard.service.ts

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { CanDeactivate } from '@angular/router';
import { CreateEmployeeComponent  } from './create-employee.component';

@Injectable()
export class CreateEmployeeCanDeactivateGuardService implements CanDeactivate<CreateEmployeeComponent>{
    canDeactivate(component: CreateEmployeeComponent): boolean{
        alert("HJEJJEJEJ");
        if(component.createEmployeeForm.dirty)
        {
            return confirm('Are you sure you want to discard your changes?');
        }
        return true;
    }
}

app-routing.module.ts

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { Routes, RouterModule } from '@angular/router';
import { ListEmployeesComponent } from './employees/list-employees.component';
import { CreateEmployeeComponent } from './employees/create-employee.component';
import { CreateEmployeeCanDeactivateGuardService } from './employees/create-employee-can-deactivate-guard.service';


const routes: Routes = [
    {path: 'list', component: ListEmployeesComponent},
    {
        path:'create', 
        component: CreateEmployeeComponent,
        canDeactivate: [CreateEmployeeCanDeactivateGuardService]
    },
    {path: '', redirectTo:'/list', pathMatch:'full'}
];

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

I feel everything is correct as per some of the other answers I found on the StackOverflow. Please let me know what am I doing wrong here. I have also posted my code here.

Answer 1

I finally found out what was the issue. After some time spending on the research I found out that in the navbar previously I was using the href element with the anchor tag hence the canDeactivate guard was not kicking in. Now I changed it to [routerLink]="['/list']" and the canDeactivate started working correctly.

Posting the answer as it may be useful for someone who is looking for solution:

Previous Navbar with the anchor tag and href element:

<a class="nav-link" href="list">List <span class="sr-only">(current)</span></a>

Changed Navbar with the anchor tag and routerLink which is working fine with the canDeactivate:

<a class="nav-link" [routerLink]="['/list']">List <span class="sr-only">(current)</span></a>

If in case you are looking for the whole code please check the question where I have mentioned all the code chunks related to canDeactivate guard.