Navigating to Routes with Mandatory Parameters

Suppose that when the user selects an entity (for example, customer, sales order) on an initial view, the application is to navigate to another view where details about the selected entity are displayed. To implement such a master-detail scenario, you can pass the data of the selected entity (for example, the associated Id) to the detail view via one or more parameters of the route. The parameter(s) can then be used by the detail view to identify the entity and fetch and display additional information.

SAPUI5 supports routes with mandatory and optional parameters, which are both defined in the pattern of a route. You specify a mandatory parameter for the pattern by placing the parameter in curly brackets.

In the example shown, a mandatory parameter named customerId is defined for the detail route. This makes, for example, the hashes detail/5 and detail/(00505604-4e85-1edd-818f-21e64b9cd2cf) match the route, while the hash detail/ does not. The patternMatched event of the route (see the next section) is then passed 5 or (00505604-4e85-1edd-818f-21e64b9cd2cf) as customerId in its arguments parameter.

The parameters of a route are set using the navTo method of the router. After the name of the route to be navigated to, a configuration object with the parameter values for the route is passed to this method as the second parameter.

The router always makes sure that mandatory parameters as specified in the route's pattern are set; otherwise an error is thrown.

Let's look at an example for setting parameter values and receiving parameter values, respectively.