There are three cases where AngularJS will perform a full page reload:
Links that contain target element
Example: <a href="/ext/link?a=b" target="_self">link</a>
Absolute links that go to a different domain
Example: <a href="http://angularjs.org/">link</a>
Links starting with '/' that lead to a different base path when base is defined
Example: <a href="/not-my-base/link">link</a>
Using javascript:
The $location service allows you to change only the URL; it does not allow you to reload the page. When you need to change the URL and reload the page or navigate to a different page, please use a lower level API: $window.location.href.
We had the same issue, working from JS code (i.e. not from HTML anchor). This is how we solved that:
If needed, virtually alter current URL through $location service. This might be useful if your destination is just a variation on the current URL, so that you can take advantage of $location helper methods. E.g. we ran $location.search(..., ...) to just change value of a querystring paramater.
Build up the new destination URL, using current $location.url() if needed. In order to work, this new one had to include everything after schema, domain and port. So e.g. if you want to move to:
I had the same issue. When I use window.location, $window.location or even <a href="..." target="_self"> the route does not refresh the page. So the cached services are used which is not what I want in my app. I resolved it by adding window.location.reload() after window.location to force the page to reload after routing. This method seems to load the page twice though. Might be a dirty trick, but it does the work. This is how I have it now: