That means the ion-router never touches the DOM, it does NOT show the components or emit any kind of lifecycle event, it just tell ion-nav and ion-tabs what to "show" based in the browser's URL.

In order to configure this relationship between components (to load/select) and URLs, ion-router uses a declarative syntax using JSX/HTML to define a tree of routes.

Tree of routes

The way to structure navigation in an ionic app is by nesting ion-navs and ion-tabs, for example, you have an ion-nav at the root, where you "push" an page that has an ion-tabs, then inside each tab (ion-tab) you might have another ion-nav since you want navigation independent navigation for each tab.

Obviously this structure is app-dependent, but in any case, nesting router-outlets (ion-nav or ion-tabs) is a common pattern. This is way the routes defined in ion-router are not a list of routes, but an tree.

Any route can have a list of nested routes:

<ion-router>
  <ion-route component="page-tabs">
    <ion-route url="/schedule" component="tab-schedule">
      <ion-route component="page-schedule"></ion-route>
      <ion-route url="/session/:sessionId" component="page-session"></ion-route>
    </ion-route>

    <ion-route url="/speakers" component="tab-speaker">
      <ion-route component="page-speaker-list"></ion-route>
      <ion-route url="/session/:sessionId" component="page-session"></ion-route>
      <ion-route url="/:speakerId" component="page-speaker-detail"></ion-route>
    </ion-route>

    <ion-route url="/map" component="page-map"></ion-route>
    <ion-route url="/about" component="page-about"></ion-route>
  </ion-route>

  <ion-route url="/tutorial" component="page-tutorial"></ion-route>
  <ion-route url="/login" component="page-login"></ion-route>
  <ion-route url="/account" component="page-account"></ion-route>
  <ion-route url="/signup" component="page-signup"></ion-route>
  <ion-route url="/support" component="page-support"></ion-route>
</ion-router>

This hierarchy of routes matches the hierarchy of how ion-tabs and ion-navs are nested together.

readme.md

ion-router

Tree of routes

Properties

base

useHash

Attributes

base

use-hash

Events

ionRouteChanged

Methods

navChanged()

push()