Leaving templateUrl empty in $routeProvider.when() crashes the browser

[RoxKilly]

AngularJS 1.4.0
Firefox 38.0.5 (Privacy Mode)

When setting up routing (ngRoute) in the module's .config(), using an empty string as the templateUrl will force the browser into either an infinite loop or a crash.

$routeProvider.when('/custom/route' {templateUrl:'', controller:'', controllerAs:''}) will crash. Replacing templateUrl with a string (even a non-existing file) does not cause the crash.

[caitp]

Can you elaborate on "crash"? If the browser crashes, that's a Firefox bug you should report on bugzilla.mozilla.org. If you just mean it throws, that seems expected

[caitp]

If we're doing some string processing that blocks the browser, then we should fix that, though.

[RoxKilly]

When I first noticed the problem (by clicking on a link whose routing was set to a templateUrl:'', the entire browser (not just the tab) became unresponsive for about 10 seconds and my CPU usage rose to 100%, then a Firefox alert told me that a script on the page was taking too long and gave me the option to let the script run, or to stop the script. I chose to let it run and eventually the browser crashed (meaning it force-closed and the Mozilla Crash Reporter opened)

In subsequent tests, I can replicate the unresponsiveness and high CPU usage every time, but I no longer get the option to stop the script; the browser just crashes and the Crash Reporter opens.

This only happens when templateUrl is an empty string. I chose to report it here because I suspected either an infinite loop in AngularJS or perhaps a lack of input validation for the function that uses the templateUrl setting to setup the route.

[caitp]

Thanks for the details. And you're sure you can't replicate this on another browser? If we're blocking in an infinite loop somewhere you ought to be able to. I'll take a look when I can unless someone else gets to it first, or if it's been fixed already in 1.4.1

[RoxKilly]

I have not tried it on another browser

[caitp]

Do you think you could put together a simple reproduction? I've gotten it started at http://plnkr.co/edit/W9ES8v50DFHh3LWUa9N8?p=preview but so far haven't been able to break any browsers I've tried it with

[caitp]

Nevermind, I've repro'ed it =)

[caitp]

http://plnkr.co/edit/iBeXT1Y5I71jEdOB3D4w?p=preview this will break in all browsers --- so we never emit $routeChangeError in this case, but it looks like we should be taking that path since we get the 404 for the empty template string.

This is not a regression, it's been broken since at least v1.2.0