Angular 7 routing ignore path

Question

I have an Angular 7 application, running .Net Core on the back end. I have the following routes defined:

const routes: Routes = [ 
  { path: 'home', component: HomeComponent },
  { path: 'login', component: LoginComponent },
  { path: 'about', component: AboutComponent },
  { path: '**', redirectTo: 'home' } 
];

In Visual Studio 2019, this is running at https://localhost:44358.

All works as expected.

But now I want to get metadata for a SAML implementation using sustainsys.saml2.aspnetcore2. To get the metadata file, I try to enter https://localhost:44358/Saml2/ in my browser. As expected, because the path does not match anything defined, the default route takes over and I am routed to the home page.

I removed the final path, so I no longer had any default routing for unmatched paths, and then it worked fine to get the metadata.

My question is: Is there any way to redirect to 'home' for all unmatched paths except some configured path (or paths), which would just be ignored as if the default route were not present?

Answer 1

Rather add a path to your base-href in index.html (e.g. <base href="/app/"/>) so that the Angular Router won't pick up paths on your root, then you'll be able to keep your wildcard redirect as is and /Saml2/ won't be intercepted.

Of course, if the app is already in production and you need to preserve URLs, you might not be in a position to make this kind of change.