feat: warn when passing a string to $routeProvider.otherwise()

[btford]

In your route configuration, it's easy to accidentally write:

$routeProvider.otherwise('/');

Thinking that it will behave like:

$routeProvider.otherwise({ redirectTo: '/' });

What will actually happen is that the app's routing will have no otherwise behavior.

$routeProvider.otherwise should either throw an error, or alias the string as the redirectTo property of the configuration. I have a slight preference towards a string parameter be the same as redirectTo.

Thoughts? @caitp @matsko @IgorMinar

[matsko]

I think it should not accept strings and only accept a key/value object. Aliasing it wouldn't do much help to reduce the amount of typing since .otherwise is only used once in an application.

[ealtenho]

I'm taking a look at having $routeProvider.otherwise throw an error if passed a string.

[caitp]

ui-router lets you pass a string to "otherwise", and it's a very nice API. I'm more in favour of just making it redirect by default if the first param is a string... (https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router/blob/master/src/urlRouter.js#L102-L106) --- since it's a pretty elegant api that way, and the most common use case is really creating an object with just redirectTo

[ealtenho]

Following comments by @btford and @caitp, I created a pull request allowing the alias. Thoughts?

[caitp]

I'm all for it, +1 @ealtenho

[btford]

Closed in 3b5d75c.