PageNotFound route in root routes triggered after outsourcing routes to component - angular-routing

Question

my routes used to work fine when they were all together, the notfound route
{ path: '**', component: PageNotFoundComponent}
was at the last place to capture any other not defined paths.
After I moved the recipe routes to its own module these are never called. Instead, the pagenotfound is called.
Everything works fine if I remove the PageNotFoundComponent route from the root routes. Any ideas regarding whats going on here?
This is the root app routing module:
import { Routes, RouterModule } from '#angular/router';
import { NgModule, OnInit } from '#angular/core';
import { ShoppingListComponent } from './shopping-list/shopping-list.component';
import { PageNotFoundComponent } from './errors/page-not-found/page-not-found.component';
import { AuthComponent } from './auth/auth.component';
const appRoutes: Routes = [
{ path: '', redirectTo: 'recipes', pathMatch: 'full' },
{ path: 'shopping-list', component: ShoppingListComponent },
{ path: 'auth', component: AuthComponent },
{ path: '**', component: PageNotFoundComponent}
];
#NgModule({
imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(appRoutes)],
exports: [RouterModule]
})
export class AppRoutingModule {
OnInit() {
console.log(appRoutes);
}
}
This is the child recipe routing module:
import { NgModule } from '#angular/core';
import { Routes, RouterModule } from '#angular/router';
import { RecipesComponent } from './recipes.component';
import { AuthGuard } from '../auth/auth.guard';
import { RecipeStartComponent } from './recipe-start/recipe-start.component';
import { RecipeEditComponent } from './recipe-edit/recipe-edit.component';
import { RecipeDetailComponent } from './recipe-detail/recipe-detail.component';
import { RecipesResolverService } from './recipes-resolver.service';
const routes: Routes = [
{
path: 'recipes', component: RecipesComponent, canActivate: [AuthGuard] , children: [
{ path: '', component: RecipeStartComponent },
{ path: 'new', component: RecipeEditComponent },
{
path: ':id',
component: RecipeDetailComponent,
resolve: [RecipesResolverService]
},
{
path: ':id/edit',
component: RecipeEditComponent,
resolve: [RecipesResolverService]
},
]
}
];
#NgModule({
declarations: [
],
imports: [RouterModule.forChild(routes)],
exports: [RouterModule]
})
export class RecipesRoutingModule {
}
Thanks for taking the time to get this far, any idea would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The problem was that the wildcard route ('**') always should be at the end of your routes list because of the way it works.
It watches all the routes before it, and checks if any given URL, that the user is searching on matches those.
Since you've outsourced your recipes paths, and probably imported them into app.module, those paths get concatenated after the original path list that you have in your app-routing.module.
Therefore your paths in the recipe routing module end up being AFTER the wildcard route ('**'), so they get ignored by it. That's why searching on any URL listed in the recipe routing module will reroute the user to the wild card path, to your PageNotFoundComponent.
Great solution tho.

Answer 2

I solved the problem lazy loading all the routes and then adding the PageNotFound route '**' at the end, hope this helps anyone that faced the same problem:
import { Routes, RouterModule } from '#angular/router';
import { NgModule } from '#angular/core';
import { PageNotFoundComponent } from './errors/page-not-found/page-not-found.component';
// If new and :id children were inverted that would make angular take new as id
// ant that would break the app, the order of the routes is very important
// that's why the 404 PageNotFoundComponent goes the last one
const appRoutes: Routes = [
{ path: '', redirectTo: 'recipes', pathMatch: 'full' },
{ path: 'recipes', loadChildren: () => import('./recipes/recipes.module').then(m => m.RecipesModule) },
{ path: 'shopping-list', loadChildren: () => import('./shopping-list/shopping-list.module').then( m => m.ShoppingListModule) },
{ path: 'auth', loadChildren: () => import('./auth/auth.module').then( m => m.AuthModule) },
{ path: '**', component: PageNotFoundComponent }
];
#NgModule({
imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(appRoutes)],
exports: [RouterModule]
})
export class AppRoutingModule {
}