Options to disable WebDevServer's historyApiFallback

[eib]

Currently, ng serve will serve up the index page whenever an HTTP 404 error would otherwise occur. There are several instances where this is problematic:

• You've configured the router to use URL fragments (aka "#" hash) and want local development server to mirror production usage -- so that "works on my machine" isn't as possible
• You're trying to serve a new file and you're not sure if it's being bundled/output/copied successfully. It's frustrating when you try to browse around to find the new file and get index.html contents instead

Repro steps

• Configure your angular app's router to use URL fragments (aka hash, "#")
• Possibly make changes to .angular-cli.json
• Open http://localhost:4200/page-that-does-not-exist.html

Observed behavior

• http://localhost:4200/page-that-does-not-exist.html will serve up the app's index page

Desired behavior

• I want those 404 Not Found's!

Notes

While it would be fantastic if the cli could inspect the app to determine that the router was configured with { useHash: true}, I'd also be willing to accept a command-line parameter or some new option in .angular-cli.json.

The 404-handling is using WebpackDevServer's .historyApiFallback option.

See also: ./packages/@angular/cli/tasks/serve.ts

[anupamarachuri]

Did you find a solution to this? Having a similar problem.

[eib]

@anupamarachuri At the moment, you can manually modify ./packages/@angular/cli/tasks/serve.ts to set historyApiCallback to false. However, this change will probably be blown away the next time you run yarn.

FYI, @filipesilva closed pull request #9659 with these comments:

Hi, we aren't thinking of adding new flags right now, and we are adding an extensibility model in the next major version that will allow you to replace the dev server. For these reasons I am closing this PR.

[drdamour]

did this ever get exposed from angular.json so you could pass thru a false value?

[alan-agius4]

Thanks for this feature request.

Since this is not a common option that users needs to set. We feel that for this option it's a better fit to use a custom builder such as https://github.com/manfredsteyer/ngx-build-plus or https://github.com/just-jeb/angular-builders/tree/master/packages/custom-webpack

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