angular: Cannot read _routeConfig of null

This issue was posted by @francois-appliware under angular/vladivostok and was gaining traction until the repo was merged into this one. I’m posting it here for visibility.

Hi, I am working with the new router and had an issue that I “managed to resolve”, but as I don’t quite understand how everything works under the hood I prefer to open this issue and try to understand what is going on.

In my application, I have a few routes as following :

{ path: '/dashboard', component: DashboardComponent },
{
    path: '/companies', component: CompanyComponent, children: [
        { path: '/details/:id', component: CompanyDetailComponent },
        { path: '/new', component: CompanyEditComponent },
        { path: '/', component: CompanyDetailComponent, index: true }
    ]
},
{
    path: '/keys', component: KeyComponent, children: [
        { path: '/details/:id', component: KeyDetailComponent },
        { path: '/new', component: KeyEditComponent },
        { path: '/', component: CompanyDetailComponent, index: true }
    ]
}

When I am navigating from companies to keys, I have the following error :

Error {rejection: TypeError: Cannot read property '_routeConfig' of null
at GuardChecks.runCanDeactivate (http://l…, promise: ZoneAwarePromise, zone: Zone, task: ZoneTask, message: "Uncaught (in promise): TypeError: Cannot read property '_routeConfig' of null"}

So I went ahead and downloaded the code to see what was going on inside that “GuardChecks”.

For what I understand, it is used for the CanActivate / CanDeactivate (that I do not use in any of my components). Also, from what I understand, it is working with nullable values (in my case, where I don’t have such guards).

Problem is, at some point in adds a check with a null value that throws the previous error mentioned above.

I managed to solve my issue by replacing the following line inside “router.js” inside the method GuardChecks.prototype.runCanDeactivate = function (component, curr) var canDeactivate = curr._routeConfig ? curr._routeConfig.canDeactivate : null; by the following : var canDeactivate = curr ? (curr._routeConfig ? curr._routeConfig.canDeactivate : null) : null;

(Yes, it’s ugly but that’s a hotfix so I can continue working) I think the check can be set before the ‘runCanDeactivate’, where the checks are added, maybe in the traverseRoutes method inside GuardChecks.

Is this a known bug or a real bug and needs a fix or is it intended ?

Thank you.

This bug has been present in the 3.0.0 router since release and is still present in alpha-7. It makes the router unusable for production applications. Hopefully this can be resolved and released soon. Thanks!