Maybe you want to add a global "resolve" property to all routes in an angular app, this is one way you could achieve that. I would probably still factor out the logic inside my app.config block into some sort of Service abstraction, but this should serve as enough of a general idea.

route_manifest.js

app.constant("RouteManifest", {
  "/login" : {
    templateUrl: 'templates/login.html',
    controller: 'LoginController'
  },
  
  "/home" : {
    templateUrl: 'templates/home.html',
    controller: 'HomeController'
  },
  
  "/books" : {
    templateUrl: 'templates/books.html',
    controller: 'BooksController',
    resolve: {
      books : function(BookService) {
        return BookService.get();
      }
    }
  }
});

app.config(function($routeProvider, RouteManifest) {

  var addGlobalResolveToRoutes = function(manifest) {
    _(manifest).each(function(config, path) {
      var extendedResolveConfig = _(config.resolve).extend({ nameOfGlobalResolve: function() { ... }});
      manifest[path].resolve = extendedResolveConfig;
    });
  };
  
  var routes = addGlobalResolveToRoutes(RouteManifest);
  
  _(routes).each(function(path, config) {
    $routeProvider.when(path, config);
  });

  $routeProvider.otherwise({ redirectTo: '/login' });

});

Here is another discussion of a solutoin: https://spin.atomicobject.com/2014/10/04/javascript-angularjs-resolve-routes/

@davemo shouldn't the addGlobalResolveToRoutesfunction return the manifest modified ? otherwise I don't see how var routes = addGlobalResolveToRoutes(RouteManifest); could return something ... ?