Complex nesting of partials and templates

UPDATE: Check out AngularUI's new project to address this problem

For subsections it's as easy as leveraging strings in ng-include:

<ul id="subNav">
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='section1/subpage1.htm'">Sub Page 1</a></li>
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='section1/subpage2.htm'">Sub Page 2</a></li>
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='section1/subpage3.htm'">Sub Page 3</a></li>
</ul>
<ng-include src="subPage"></ng-include>

Or you can create an object in case you have links to sub pages all over the place:

$scope.pages = { page1: 'section1/subpage1.htm', ... };

<ul id="subNav">
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='page1'">Sub Page 1</a></li>
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='page2'">Sub Page 2</a></li>
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='page3'">Sub Page 3</a></li>
</ul>
<ng-include src="pages[subPage]"></ng-include>

Or you can even use $routeParams

$routeProvider.when('/home', ...);
$routeProvider.when('/home/:tab', ...);
$scope.params = $routeParams;

<ul id="subNav">
  <li><a href="#/home/tab1">Sub Page 1</a></li>
  <li><a href="#/home/tab2">Sub Page 2</a></li>
  <li><a href="#/home/tab3">Sub Page 3</a></li>
</ul>
<ng-include src=" '/home/' + tab + '.html' "></ng-include>

You can also put an ng-controller at the top-most level of each partial

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Well, since you can currently only have one ngView directive... I use nested directive controls. This allows you to set up templating and inherit (or isolate) scopes among them. Outside of that I use ng-switch or even just ng-show to choose which controls I'm displaying based on what's coming in from $routeParams.

EDIT Here's some example pseudo-code to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. With a nested sub navigation.

Here's the main app page

<!-- primary nav -->
<a href="#/page/1">Page 1</a>
<a href="#/page/2">Page 2</a>
<a href="#/page/3">Page 3</a>

<!-- display the view -->
<div ng-view>
</div>

Directive for the sub navigation

app.directive('mySubNav', function(){
    return {
        restrict: 'E',
        scope: {
           current: '=current'
        },
        templateUrl: 'mySubNav.html',
        controller: function($scope) {
        }
    };
});

template for the sub navigation

<a href="#/page/1/sub/1">Sub Item 1</a>
<a href="#/page/1/sub/2">Sub Item 2</a>
<a href="#/page/1/sub/3">Sub Item 3</a>

template for a main page (from primary nav)

<my-sub-nav current="sub"></my-sub-nav>

<ng-switch on="sub">
  <div ng-switch-when="1">
      <my-sub-area1></my-sub-area>
  </div>
  <div ng-switch-when="2">
      <my-sub-area2></my-sub-area>
  </div>
  <div ng-switch-when="3">
      <my-sub-area3></my-sub-area>
  </div>
</ng-switch>

Controller for a main page. (from the primary nav)

app.controller('page1Ctrl', function($scope, $routeParams) {
     $scope.sub = $routeParams.sub;
});

Directive for a Sub Area

app.directive('mySubArea1', function(){
    return {
        restrict: 'E',
        templateUrl: 'mySubArea1.html',
        controller: function($scope) {
            //controller for your sub area.
        }
    };
});

---

You may checkout this library for the same purpose also:

http://angular-route-segment.com

It looks like what you are looking for, and it is much simpler to use than ui-router. From the demo site:

JS:

$routeSegmentProvider.

when('/section1',          's1.home').
when('/section1/:id',      's1.itemInfo.overview').
when('/section2',          's2').

segment('s1', {
    templateUrl: 'templates/section1.html',
    controller: MainCtrl}).
within().
    segment('home', {
        templateUrl: 'templates/section1/home.html'}).
    segment('itemInfo', {
        templateUrl: 'templates/section1/item.html',
        controller: Section1ItemCtrl,
        dependencies: ['id']}).
    within().
        segment('overview', {
            templateUrl: 'templates/section1/item/overview.html'}).

Top-level HTML:

<ul>
    <li ng-class="{active: $routeSegment.startsWith('s1')}">
        <a href="/section1">Section 1</a>
    </li>
    <li ng-class="{active: $routeSegment.startsWith('s2')}">
        <a href="/section2">Section 2</a>
    </li>
</ul>
<div id="contents" app-view-segment="0"></div>

Nested HTML:

<h4>Section 1</h4>
Section 1 contents.
<div app-view-segment="1"></div>

---

I too was struggling with nested views in Angular.

Once I got a hold of ui-router I knew I was never going back to angular default routing functionality.

Here is an example application that uses multiple levels of views nesting

app.config(function ($stateProvider, $urlRouterProvider,$httpProvider) {
// navigate to view1 view by default
$urlRouterProvider.otherwise("/view1");

$stateProvider
    .state('view1', {
        url: '/view1',
        templateUrl: 'partials/view1.html',
        controller: 'view1.MainController'
    })
    .state('view1.nestedViews', {
        url: '/view1',
        views: {
            'childView1': { templateUrl: 'partials/view1.childView1.html' , controller: 'childView1Ctrl'},
            'childView2': { templateUrl: 'partials/view1.childView2.html', controller: 'childView2Ctrl' },
            'childView3': { templateUrl: 'partials/view1.childView3.html', controller: 'childView3Ctrl' }
        }
    })

    .state('view2', {
        url: '/view2',
    })

    .state('view3', {
        url: '/view3',
    })

    .state('view4', {
        url: '/view4',
    });
});

As it can be seen there are 4 main views (view1,view2,view3,view4) and view1 has 3 child views.

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You may use ng-include to avoid using nested ng-views.

http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/directive/ngInclude
http://plnkr.co/edit/ngdoc:example-example39@snapshot?p=preview

My index page I use ng-view. Then on my sub pages which I need to have nested frames. I use ng-include. The demo shows a dropdown. I replaced mine with a link ng-click. In the function I would put $scope.template = $scope.templates[0]; or $scope.template = $scope.templates[1];

$scope.clickToSomePage= function(){
  $scope.template = $scope.templates[0];
};

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Angular ui-router supports nested views. I haven't used it yet but looks very promising.

http://angular-ui.github.io/ui-router/

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