Lightning: New way to detect a change in the URL (effective Summer '18)

Question

Now that aura:locationChange event no longer works with the new URL format ( effective from Summer '18 release. Reference here), is there a way to detect a change in the URL using lightning events or any other mechanism?

    handleLocationChange: function (component, event, helper) {
        var location = event.getParam("token");//this returns null now with the Summer '18 release.
        if (location != '/n/my_fav_URL') {
            //do some {!stuff}
        } else {
            //do some {!NOT(stuff)}
        }
    }

I see that lightning:navigation and pageReference object don't really provide a straight way to detect the URL changes like aura:locationChange did.

Answer 1

For Lightning communities only:

<aura:handler event="forceCommunity:routeChange" action="{!c.handleRouteChange}"

allows you to do so.

For LEX, in app, I dont know if there is a clean way to do so, maybe someone else can provide feedback.

I know you can use setInterval to constantly check the url and log any url changes by leveraging Change Handlers to perform an action based on the change taking place.