How To Broadcast Path Changes To All Views In An Angularjs App?

I have an AngularJS single-page app displaying 3 views (which are actually 3 directives). To illustrate my question, let's assume my UI is identical to that of GMail and that my 3

Solution 1:

Your final version seems fine with the locationChangeSuccess, but for others reading this, I think you ruled out the $routeProvider too quickly. You can have one ng-view for the main content pane that changes with the path, and then other independent ("static") controllers/templates for the navigation pane and toolbar.

Now to listen to route changes in these other 2 controllers:

$rootScope.$on('$routeChangeSuccess', function(evt, cur, prev) {
    ...do what you have to do here, maybe set a $rootScope.path as you did
})

All using native Angular functionality. I actually do this in http://provok.in, a website I built using Angular, and I have a similar layout (well, not exactly, but I have "static" sections and an ng-view for the main content, dynamically updated based on the path, by the routeProvider).