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SPA (Single-page applications)

DotVVM allows for building single page applications (SPA) with minimum effort. The SPAs integrate with the master pages mechanism.

To create a SPA, you just need to replace the ContentPlaceHolder with the SpaContentPlaceHolder.

When navigated to another page which uses the same master page, the content inside SpaContentPlaceHolder will be replaced without unloading the entire page. If the target page uses a different master page, a full navigation will be performed (the entire page will be replaced with the new one).

To navigate between the pages in the SPA, you need to use the RouteLink control. If the page contains the SpaContentPlaceHolder control, DotVVM will try to load the page in the SPA mode.

Redirects in SPA

If you want to redirect the user to another page, you can use the Context.RedirectToRoute method. There are some optional parameters which can be used in the SPA applications:

  • replaceInHistory can replace the History API stack, so the browser Back button won't go to the previous SPA state.
  • allowSpaRedirect can be used to disable SPA redirects; in such case, DotVVM will unload the current page and perform a full navigation to the new page.

Changes to SPAs in DotVVM 3.0

Multiple SpaContentPlaceHolder controls

In previous versions of DotVVM, there could be only one SpaContentPlaceHolder control present in the page at the same time. Starting with DotVVM 3.0, this restriction has been lifted, and it is now possible to use multiple SPAs per page.

Removed hashbang mode in favor of History API

In DotVVM 2.x, the default behavior of SPAs was using the hashbang format of the URL (e. g. ~/MySpaApp#!/Pages/Default). When the user navigated to another page, the part of the URL after the URL fragment changed. It was possible to explicitly enable History API which was using the classic format of the URL which is not recognizable from the non-SPA application.

In DotVVM 3.0, the History API mode is the one and only option - the old way with hashbang URLs was removed from the framework. All requests pointing to the hashbang URL format will get redirected to the correct URLs, and History API will be used everywhere.

The following properties on SpaContentPlaceHolder were marked as obsolete:

  • DefaultRouteName
  • PrefixRouteName
  • UseHistoryApi

See also