How to use router.navigateByUrl and router.navigate in Angular

navigateByUrl

routerLink directive as used like this:

<a [routerLink]="/inbox/33/messages/44">Open Message 44</a>

is just a wrapper around imperative navigation using router and its navigateByUrl method:

router.navigateByUrl('/inbox/33/messages/44')

as can be seen from the sources:

export class RouterLink {
  ...

  @HostListener('click')
  onClick(): boolean {
    ...
    this.router.navigateByUrl(this.urlTree, extras);
    return true;
  }

So wherever you need to navigate a user to another route, just inject the router and use navigateByUrl method:

class MyComponent {
   constructor(router: Router) {
      this.router.navigateByUrl(...);
   }
}

navigate

There’s another method on the router that you can use – navigate:

router.navigate(['/inbox/33/messages/44'])

difference between the two

Using router.navigateByUrl is similar to changing the location bar
directly–we are providing the “whole” new URL. Whereas
router.navigate creates a new URL by applying an array of passed-in
commands, a patch, to the current URL.

To see the difference clearly, imagine that the current URL is
'/inbox/11/messages/22(popup:compose)'.

With this URL, calling
router.navigateByUrl('/inbox/33/messages/44') will result in
'/inbox/33/messages/44'. But calling it with
router.navigate(['/inbox/33/messages/44']) will result in
'/inbox/33/messages/44(popup:compose)'.

Read more in the official docs.