Change route parameters without updating view
angularjs, routes
Solution
Ok, after a lot of searching. I answered my own question.
I've discovered finding anything on the angular documentation is incredibly impossible, but sometimes, once it's found, it changes how you were thinking about your problem.
I began here: http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng.$location Which took me here: http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/dev_guide.services.$location Which took me to this question: AngularJS Paging with $location.path but no ngView reload
What I ended up doing: I added `$location.search({name: 'George'});` To where I wanted to change the name (A $scope.$watch).
However, this will still reload the page, unless you do what is in that bottom StackOverflow link and add a parameter to the object you pass into `$routeProvider.when`. In my case, it looked like: `$routeProvider.when('/page', {controller: 'MyCtrl', templateUrl:'path/to/template', reloadOnSearch:false})`.
I hope this saves someone else a headache.
Problem
I'm currently trying to figure out how to change the route parameters without reloading the entire page. For example, if I start at http://www.example.com/#/page but update a name to be 'George', to change the route to be: http://www.example.com/#/page/george If I already had http://www.example.com/#/page/:name routed. Without reloading the location. Can one just set $routeParams.name = "George" ? Edit: Alternatively, is there a way to update http://www.example.com/#/page?name=George without reloading or resetting the page?