title: How do I receive the initial url and detect url changes in an Angular 4 app that does not use angular router to change the user interface?
body: <p>I am new to Angular and realized at an early stage that the routing Angular provides would not allow me the flexibility I needed for the UI in my app.</p>
  
  <p>So I built a service that now handles the internal logic of the app as I want it. A typical button in the app would send some values to a function in my navigation controller (a service used in many components in the app).</p>
  
  <p>this.navCtrlService.goTo({ title: 'item 1',..some params.., id: '11' });</p>
  
  <p>This all works beautifully.</p>
  
  <p>But.. It only works with navigation within the app. I would like to be able to detect a change in the url in the browser, parse the information and use it in my service.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Let's say the user access the site using the following:
  app.com/action-31231412</li>
  <li>Something (router without an outlet?), detects the url and passes it along to the custom navigation service.</li>
  <li>The navigation service uses "31231412" as it would have used the "id" from the button.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I'm stuck at step 2.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried figuring out if I could use the router params in the Angular router, without much progress. I'm sure there is a simple solution to this that I'm not seeing.</p>
  
  <p>Please note that what I'm asking for is a way to give my service access to changes in the url. </p>