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Updating URL Parameters without Navigation

How to update URL parameters manually and without navigation.

To preserve deep linking, a developer sometimes may need to maintain the route parameters and query parameters, manually.

Route parameters, route templates and query parameters are most often defined in a link pointing to a specific view with the desired state, and when navigating to a view, the Router calls the view’s setParameter() method. The view itself should often also maintain the route and query parameters so that the user can share the URL from the browser’s location bar.

A good example of such a use case could be a search view that maintains the search parameters in the URL but doesn’t want to build its UI logic around the Router usage. Another case would be passing a more complex object to a view via a Java API instead of serializing the object somehow into the URL and passing the value via Router.

In this kind of case, the developer can use the History object to maintain the RouteParameters (and query parameters).

Example: A view that updates the URL parameters based on a parameter given in a public Java API. The view also implements HasUrlParameter to deserialize the parameter in case a user arrives at the page directly:

@Route
public class UserEditor extends VerticalLayout implements HasUrlParameter<Integer> {

    /**
     * This method can be called directly by other views.
     *
     * @param user the User instance to edit
     */
    public void editUser(User user) {
        // do the actual UI changes
        createFormForUser(user);
        // maintain a complete url in the browser
        updateQueryParameters(user);
    }

    private void updateQueryParameters(User o) {
        String deepLinkingUrl = RouteConfiguration.forSessionScope()
                .getUrl(getClass(), o.getId());
        // Assign the full deep linking URL directly using
        // History object: changes the URL in the browser,
        // but doesn't reload the page.
        getUI().get().getPage().getHistory()
                .replaceState(null, deepLinkingUrl);
    }

    @Override // HasUrlParameter interface
    public void setParameter(BeforeEvent event,
                             @OptionalParameter Integer id) {
        if(id != null) {
            // This method is called if user arrives via "deep link"
            // directly to this form. In a real world app, one would
            // likely fetch an entity/DTO via service based on its id
            createFormForUser(new User("User " + id, id));
        }
    }

    private void createFormForUser(User user) {
        // only show the user ID as this is really not a form example
        add(new Paragraph("User: " + user.getId()) );
    }

}

See more about maintaining the browser URL from the History API

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