Could this just be the behavior of $state.get() when arguments.length === 0?

I think it would make more sense for $state.get() to return the implicit root state (though '' works for that). getAll() is more of a debug/development API and probably not useful in production, which is why I kept it separate (I toyed with populating a children array on parent states but that seems more fragile than it's worth).

I can actually think of a few valid use cases for using this functionality in production (and @stu-salsbury can & has argued for this and other tree-traversal methods at length), and I really don't see a problem with passing '' to get the root state. Most importantly though, the API design of having get() vs. getAll() feels distinctly un-Angular to me.

I've got no strong objection to get() as the API, I'll change it.

Indeed anything to chip away at the gaps from detour makes me warm and fuzzy... tree traversal, json support... I'm feeling fuzzy now but that could be a coffee OD.

That said, I might know from where @eahutchins is coming. Since the states and urlRouter routes aren't internally stored as trees it felt to me as if I was operating in some sort of fragile parallel universe given that I was going to be modifying definitions at runtime.. That conclusion was the moment when I blew away my fork and after testing the waters with getting ui-router onto a tree created detour.

That said, if step one is to have the api support tree-style traversal and tree-based storage (and editing) needs to wait (perhaps forever) it still moves in a direction I like.

I think we could probably move forward with another accessor like children() which gets all the immediate (or optionally recursive) children of a state.

👍

@timkindberg Don't forget to update the docs to reflect get()'s new behavior.

https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router/wiki/Quick-Reference#stategetstatename