How do I prevent reload on named view, when state changes? AngularJS UI-Router

Question

I'm using the excellent ui-router module in my application. As part of this, I'm using named views to manage the 'dynamic sub-navigation' I have in the app.

Consider the following:

$urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/person/list');

$stateProvider
    .state('person', {
        url: '/person',
        abstract: true,
    })
    .state('person.list', {
        url: '/list',
        views: {
            "main@": {
                templateUrl: "person.list.html",
                controller: 'PersonListController'
            }
        }
    })
    .state('person.details', {
        url: '/{id}',
        views: {
            'main@': {
                templateUrl: "person.details.html",
                controller: 'PersonController'
            },
            'nav@': {
                templateUrl: "person.nav.html",
                controller: 'PersonNavController'
            }
        }
    });

When users first visit the app, they are presented with a list of people. When they click on a person, they are taken to the details page. Pretty basic stuff. Here's the markup if it helps...

<div>
    <aside ui-view="nav"></aside>
    <div ui-view="main"></div>
</div>

However, the PersonNavController calls a REST service to get a list of people, so when viewing a person, the user is able to navigate sibling elements. Using the method above causes the template and controller to re-render, thus causing a delay after every click, despite the content never changing.

Is there a way to keep the 'nav@' view loaded, and only refresh the 'main@' view?

Answer 1

The way I am using ui-router in this scenarios is: move the views to the least common denominator.

Other words: In case that ui-view="nav" is shared among all the details and is the same for all of them (because it should be loaded only once) - it should be part of the list state (parent of the detail state)

the parent state defintion would be adjusted like this:

.state('person.list', {
    url: '/list',
    views: {
        "main@": {
            templateUrl: "person.list.html",
            controller: 'PersonListController'
        }
        // here we target the person.list.html
        // and its ui-view="nav"
        'nav@person.list': {
            templateUrl: "person.nav.html",
            controller: 'PersonNavController'
        }
    }

So where is the trick? In the power of the angular ui-router. We can, during each state defintion, target the current view. Now, the nav view is part of the list state definition - i.e. it will not be reloaded during the detail switching (also check here for more explanation)

We just have to use the defined naming conventions, see:

• View Names - Relative vs. Absolute Names

Few cited lines from the mentioned documentation:

views: {
    ////////////////////////////////////
    // Relative Targeting             //
    // Targets parent state ui-view's //
    ////////////////////////////////////

    // Relatively targets the 'detail' view in this state's parent state, 'contacts'.
    // <div ui-view='detail'/> within contacts.html
    "detail" : { },            

    // Relatively targets the unnamed view in this state's parent state, 'contacts'.
    // <div ui-view/> within contacts.html
    "" : { }, 

    ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // Absolute Targeting using '@'                      //
    // Targets any view within this state or an ancestor //
    ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

    // Absolutely targets the 'info' view in this state, 'contacts.detail'.
    // <div ui-view='info'/> within contacts.detail.html
    "info@contacts.detail" : { }

    // Absolutely targets the 'detail' view in the 'contacts' state.
    // <div ui-view='detail'/> within contacts.html
    "detail@contacts" : { }