Refresh MVC view after logging in using Angular - asp.net-mvc-4

Question

Working with the Breeze Angular SPA template found here, http://www.breezejs.com/samples/breezeangular-template, I'm trying to update a menu that changes after user authenticates.
My example is slightly different from the default template in that I've moved the Login and Register views into modal windows. When the modal closes after a successful login, the menu, which is in the MVC View (and not the Angular View) does not update as a complete page refresh does not occur.
In the SPA template, authentication is required before entering the SPA, then a hard redirect/refresh occurs and the SPA is loaded. In my case, you could be browsing views/pages in the SPA before authenticating.
MVC View Code Snippet (Views/Home/Index.cshtml)
...
<li>
#if (#User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
User Logged In: #User.Identity.Name
}
else
{
User Logged In: Annon
}
</li></ul>
<div ng-app="app">
<div ng-view></div>
</div>
....
I have working the root redirect, after login, the page hard refreshes if json.redirect is set to '/'. However, if its set to the current page, i.e. '#/about', Angular handles the routing and therefore no hard refresh occurs, thus the menu is not updated.
Ajax Login Code Snippet (App/ajaxlogin.js)
... part of login/register function
if (json.success) {
window.location = json.redirect || location.href;
} else if (json.errors) {
displayErrors($form, json.errors);
}
...
Is this possible to do using my current setup? Or do I need to move the menu somewhere inside the SPA and use Angular to determine what menu to show? If the latter, direction in how to best do this? I'm new to both Angular and Breeze.

Answer 1

The TempHire sample in Breeze has a really good way of handling authentication for a SPA (in my opinion at least!) Granted this is using Durandal so you will need to adapt it to Angular, but they are both frameworks doing the same basic principles so good luck! -
Basically, the Controller action has an annotation [Authorize] on the action that the prepare method is calling on the entitymanagerprovider. If a 401 is returned (not authorized) the SPA takes the bootPublic path and only exposes a login route to the user. When the login is successful, the login method tells the window to reload everything, at which time the authorization passes, and the bootPrivate method is called -
shell.js (Durandal, but should be adaptable)
//#region Internal Methods
function activate() {
return entitymanagerprovider
.prepare()
.then(bootPrivate)
.fail(function (e) {
if (e.status === 401) {
return bootPublic();
} else {
shell.handleError(e);
return false;
}
});
}
function bootPrivate() {
router.mapNav('home');
router.mapNav('resourcemgt', 'viewmodels/resourcemgt', 'Resource Management');
//router.mapRoute('resourcemgt/:id', 'viewmodels/resourcemgt', 'Resource Management', false);
log('TempHire Loaded!', null, true);
return router.activate('home');
}
function bootPublic() {
router.mapNav('login');
return router.activate('login');
}
login.js -
function loginUser() {
if (!self.isValid()) return Q.resolve(false);
return account.loginUser(self.username(), self.password())
.then(function() {
window.location = '/';
return true;
})
.fail(self.handleError);
}
The account.loginUser function is basically just an ajax call that passes credentials to the account controller and returns a success or failure. On success you can see the callback is fired for window.location = '/' which does a full reload. On failure simply show an alert or something.