Redirect a state to default substate with UI-Router in AngularJS

I'm creating a tab based page which shows some data. I'm using UI-Router in AngularJs to register states.

My aim is to have one default tab open on page load. Each tab have sub tabs, and I would like to have a default sub tab open when changing tabs.

I was testing with onEnter function and inside I'm using $state.go('mainstate.substate'); but it seems not to work due to loop effect issues (on state.go to substate it calls its parent state and so on, and it turns into a loop).

$stateProvider

.state('main', {
  url: '/main',
  templateUrl: 'main.html',
  onEnter: function($state) {
    $state.go('main.street');
  }
})

.state('main.street', {
  url: '/street',
  templateUrl: 'submenu.html',
  params: {tabName: 'street'}
})

Here I created a plunker demo.

For now everything works, except that I don't have the default tab open and that's exactly what I need.

Thank you for your suggestions, opinions and ideas.

Update: 1.0 Onwards Supports redirectTo out of the box.

https://ui-router.github.io/ng1/docs/latest/interfaces/state.statedeclaration.html#redirectto

---

I created an example here.

This solution comes from a nice "Comment" to an an issue with redirection using .when() (https://stackoverflow.com/a/27131114/1679310) and really cool solution for it (by Chris T, but the original post was by yahyaKacem)

https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router/issues/1584#issuecomment-75137373

So firstly let's extend main with redirection setting:

$stateProvider
    .state('main', {
      url: '/main',
      templateUrl: 'main.html',
      redirectTo: 'main.street',
    })

And add only this few lines into run

app.run(['$rootScope', '$state', function($rootScope, $state) {
  
    $rootScope.$on('$stateChangeStart', function(evt, to, params) {
      if (to.redirectTo) {
        evt.preventDefault();
        $state.go(to.redirectTo, params, {location: 'replace'})
      }
    });
}]);

This way we can adjust any of our states with its default redirection...Check it here

EDIT: Added option from comment by @Alec to preserve the browser history.

In fact even if this solution proposed by Radim did exactly the job, I needed to remember every tab's sub tab (state).

So I found another solution which do the same thing but also remembers every tab substate.

I all have to do was to install ui-router-extras and use the deep state redirect feature:

$stateProvider
  .state('main.street', {
     url: '/main/street',
     templateUrl: 'main.html',
     deepStateRedirect: { default: { state: 'main.street.cloud' } },
  });

Thank you!

As of version 1.0 of the ui-router it supports a redirectTo property. For example:

.state('A', {
  redirectTo: 'A.B'
})

Since version 1.0 of ui-router, a default hook has been introduced using IHookRegistry.onBefore() as demonstrated in the example Data Driven Default Substate in http://angular-ui.github.io/ui-router/feature-1.0/interfaces/transition.ihookregistry.html#onbefore

// state declaration
{
  name: 'home',
  template: '<div ui-view/>',
  defaultSubstate: 'home.dashboard'
}

var criteria = {
  to: function(state) {
    return state.defaultSubstate != null;
  }
}
$transitions.onBefore(criteria, function($transition$, $state) {
  return $state.target($transition$.to().defaultSubstate);
});

app.config(function($stateProvider,$urlRouterProvider){

    $urlRouterProvider.when("/state","/state/sub-state");
    
    })

If someone comes here for an answer regarding how to implement a simple redirect for a state and, as it happened to me, doesn't have the opportunity to use the new router...

Obviously again if you can, @bblackwo answer is great:

$stateProvider.state('A', {
  redirectTo: 'B',
});

If you can't then just manually redirect it:

$stateProvider.state('A', {
  controller: $state => {
    $state.go('B');
  },
});

I hope it helps!