The documentation reiterates your findings here: https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router/wiki/URL-Routing#stateparams-service
If my memory serves, $stateParams
was introduced later than the original $state.params
, and seems to be a simple helper injector to avoid continuously writing $state.params
.
I doubt there are any best practice guidelines, but context wins out for me. If you simply want access to the params received into the url, then use $stateParams
. If you want to know something more complex about the state itself, use $state
.