What's the proper way to set a Router & RouterLink in Angular2 Dart

Question: What's the proper way to set a Router & RouterLink in the Angular2 Dart.

main.dart

import 'package:angular2/angular2.dart';
import 'package:angular2/router.dart';

import 'package:angular2/src/reflection/reflection.dart' show reflector;
import 'package:angular2/src/reflection/reflection_capabilities.dart' show ReflectionCapabilities;


@Component(
    selector: 'home'
)
@View(
    template: '<h1>I am Home</h1><a router-link="child">Go Child</a>',
    directives: const [RouterOutlet, RouterLink]
)
class Home {}

//
//
//

@Component(
  selector: 'child'
)
@View(
    template: '<h1>I am Child</h1><a router-link="home">Go Home</a>',
    directives: const [RouterOutlet, RouterLink]
)
class Child {}

//
//
//

@Component(
  selector: 'index'
)
@View(
  template: '''
  <router-outlet></router-outlet>
            ''',
  directives: const [RouterOutlet, RouterLink]
)
class Index {
  Router router;

  Index(Router this.router) {
    router.config({ 'path': '/child', 'component': Child, 'alias': 'child'});
    router.config({ 'path': '/', 'component': Home, 'alias': 'home'});
  }

}

main() {
  reflector.reflectionCapabilities = new ReflectionCapabilities();
  bootstrap(Index, routerInjectables);
}

Here's my approach:

In router_link.dart I see newHref coming back as null

onAllChangesDone() {
    if (isPresent(this._route) && isPresent(this._params)) {
      var newHref = this._router.generate(this._route, this._params);
      this._href = newHref;
      // Keeping the link on the element to support contextual menu `copy link`

      // and other in-browser affordances.
      print('newHref');
      print(newHref);
      DOM.setAttribute(this._domEl, "href", newHref);
    }

This results in an error and kills the navigation request.

> String expected > STACKTRACE: > 0 BlinkElement.setAttribute_Callback_2 (dart:blink:7565) > > 1 BlinkElement.setAttribute_Callback_2 (dart:_blink:7566) > > 2 Element.setAttribute (dart:html:13673) > > 3 BrowserDomAdapter.setAttribute(package:angular2/src/dom/browser_adapter.dart:258:25) > > 4 RouterLink.onAllChangesDone(package:angular2/src/router/router_link.dart:66:23)

As of Angular Dart 2.0.0 (release candidate), the correct syntax for a router link is:

<a [router-link]="['./Home']">Go Home</a>

The value is a list of arguments that are passed to Router.navigate().

The correct syntax for configuring routes is:

@Component(
    selector: 'my-app',
    template: ...,
    directives: const [ROUTER_DIRECTIVES],
    providers: const [HeroService, ROUTER_PROVIDERS])
@RouteConfig(const [
  const Route(
      path: '/dashboard',
      name: 'Dashboard',
      component: DashboardComponent,
      useAsDefault: true),
  const Route(
      path: '/detail/:id', name: 'HeroDetail', component: HeroDetailComponent),
  const Route(path: '/heroes', name: 'Heroes', component: HeroesComponent)
])
class AppComponent {
  String title = 'Tour of Heroes';
}

app/partials/phone-list.html:

<div class="container-fluid">
  <div class="row">
    <div class="col-md-2">
      <!--Sidebar content-->

      Search: <input ng-model="query">
      Sort by:
      <select ng-model="orderProp">
        <option value="name">Alphabetical</option>
        <option value="age">Newest</option>
      </select>

    </div>
    <div class="col-md-10">
      <!--Body content-->

      <ul class="phones">
        <li ng-repeat="phone in phones | filter:query | orderBy:orderProp" class="thumbnail">
          <a href="#/phones/{{phone.id}}" class="thumb"><img ng-src="{{phone.imageUrl}}"></a>
         <a href="#/phones/{{phone.id}}">{{phone.name}}</a>
          <p>{{phone.snippet}}</p>
        </li>
      </ul>

    </div>
  </div>
</div>

check out @ngrx/router it's an simpler router implementation for Angular 2 https://github.com/ngrx/router

you can see how simple it is to declare routes

import { Routes } from '@ngrx/router';

const routes: Routes = [
  {
    path: '/',
    component: HomePage
  },
  {
    path: '/blog',
    component: BlogPage,
    children: [
      {
        path: ':id',
        component: PostPage
      }
    ]
  }
]

and here is a demo plunker http://plnkr.co/edit/7J6RrA?p=preview

Note: Starting with AngularJS version 1.2, ngRoute is in its own module and must be loaded by loading the additional angular-route.js file, which we download via Bower above. app/index.html:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en" ng-app="phonecatApp">
<head>
...
  <script src="bower_components/angular/angular.js"></script>
  <script src="bower_components/angular-route/angular-route.js"></script>
  <script src="js/app.js"></script>
  <script src="js/controllers.js"></script>
</head>
<body>

  <div ng-view></div>
</body>