Angularjs – $state.go(‘state.name’) not correctly changing states

If you want to pass non-URL state, then you must not use url when setting up your state. I found the answer on a PR and did some monkeying around to better understand.

$stateProvider.state('toState', {
  templateUrl:'wokka.html',
  controller:'stateController',
  params: {
    'referer': 'some default', 
    'param2': 'some default', 
    'etc': 'some default'
  }
});

Then you can navigate to it like so:

$state.go('toState', { 'referer':'jimbob', 'param2':37, 'etc':'bluebell' });

Or:

var result = { referer:'jimbob', param2:37, etc:'bluebell' };
$state.go('toState', result);

And in HTML thusly:

<a ui-sref="toState(thingy)" class="list-group-item" ng-repeat="thingy in thingies">{{ thingy.referer }}</a>

This use case is completely uncovered in the documentation, but I think it's a powerful means on transitioning state without using URLs.

I adjusted your approach below. We will profit from decorating, but not of the directive. As we can check here, in the ui-sref directive source code, the click event in fact does call:

$state.go(ref.state, params, options); 

So, we can decorate the $state provider, which could be very straightforward:

.config(function ($provide) {
    $provide.decorator('$state', function ($delegate) {

        // let's locally use 'state' name
        var state = $delegate;

        // let's extend this object with new function 
        // 'baseGo', which in fact, will keep the reference
        // to the original 'go' function
        state.baseGo = state.go;

        // here comes our new 'go' decoration
        var go = function (to, params, options) {
            options = options || {};

            // only in case of missing 'reload'
            // append our explicit 'true'
            if (angular.isUndefined(options.reload)) {

                options.reload = true;
            }

            // return processing to the 'baseGo' - original
            return this.baseGo(to, params, options);
        };

        // assign new 'go', right now decorating the old 'go'
        state.go = go;

        return $delegate;
    });        
})

And that's enough. Now any state change (including click on ui-sref) will trigger reload.

Note: Just must say, that I do not think that this is the way. Triggering reload all the time ... to me it seems that we in fact loose a lot, loose the advantages coming with that diamond - ui-router