How to load child route by default in angular 2

Add empty path routes as redirect automatically

const appRoutes: Routes = [    {        path:'',        redirectTo: 'a',        pathMatch: 'full'     },    {        path: 'a',        component: AComponent,        children:[            {                path:'',                redirectTo: 'x',                pathMatch: 'full'             },            {                path:'x',                component: AXcomponent             }        ]    },    {         path: 'b',        component: bComponent    }];

The accepted answer is no good if your child route contains an outlet.

For example I am displaying an 'order' by ID and using a named outlet 'detail' for the summary as well as other panels.

/orders/5000001/(detail:summary)/orders/5000001/(detail:edit)

Because these URLS are so ugly I also wanted the following two to redirect:

/orders/5000001           =>    /orders/5000001/(detail:summary)/orders/5000001/summary   =>    /orders/5000001/(detail:summary)

So I tried a componentless redirect in the child:

{ path: '', pathMatch: 'full', redirectTo: '(detail:summary)' }

This fails because a 'redirectTo' needs to be absolute (I'm sure there's a complex technical reason for this). So then I tried this:

{ path: '', pathMatch: 'full', redirectTo: '/order/:id/(detail:summary)' }

And that fails because :id is not a named variable in the context of the child.

So in the end I figured this out:

 children: [     { path: ':id', pathMatch: 'full', redirectTo: '/orders/:id/(detail:summary)' },     { path: ':id/summary', pathMatch: 'full', redirectTo: '/orders/:id/(detail:summary)' },     {         // this goes in the main router outlet         path: ':id', component: OrderFulldetailsComponent,         children: [             { path: 'summary', component: OrderSummaryComponent, outlet: 'detail' },             { path: 'edit', component: OrderEditComponent, outlet: 'detail' }         ]     } ]

Note it is important to do pathMatch: 'full' on path: ':id' or it will match when you hit /:id/(detail:summary) and go nowhere.