Part 27 Remove # from URL AngularJS

There are 4 simple steps to remove # from URLs in Angular. 

Step 1 : Enable html5mode routing. To do this inject $locationProvider into config() function in script.js and call html5Mode() method passing true as the argument value. With this change the config function will now look as shown below. 

.config(function ($routeProvider, $locationProvider) {
    $routeProvider
        .when("/home", {
            templateUrl: "Templates/home.html",
            controller: "homeController"
        })
        .when("/courses", {
            templateUrl: "Templates/courses.html",
            controller: "coursesController"
        })
        .when("/students", {
            templateUrl: "Templates/students.html",
            controller: "studentsController"
        })
    $locationProvider.html5Mode(true);
})

Step 2 : In index.html, remove # symbols from all the links. The links in index.html should look as shown below. 

<a href="home">Home</a>
<a href="courses">Courses</a>
<a href="students">Students</a>

Step 3 : Include the following URL rewrite rule in web.config. This rewrite rule, rewrites all urls to index.html, except if the request is for a file, or a directory or a Web API request. 

<system.webServer>
  <rewrite>
    <rules>
      <rule name="RewriteRules" stopProcessing="true">
        <match url=".*" />
        <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
          <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
          <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
          <add input="{REQUEST_URI}" pattern="^/(api)" negate="true" />
        </conditions>
        <action type="Rewrite" url="/index.html" />
      </rule>
    </rules>
  </rewrite>
</system.webServer>

Step 4 : Set the base href to the location of your single page application. In the head section of index.html include the following line.

<base href="/" />