Need currently selected tab ID for jQuery tabs

Question

I know I can get the index of the currently selected tab but can I somehow get to the ID (the equivalent of the ui.panel.id if this were triggered by an tab event...but it's not) of the currently selected tab? I'd prefer not to use the index because ordering of the tabs might change. I prefer not to use the style markups as those may change in future releases. Is there a method for this? If not, can I somehow use the index to access this (maybe even by accessing the panel object first)? Any other ideas?

Answer 1

Jonathan Sampson's answer doesn't work anymore. Try...

$("#tabs .ui-tabs-panel:visible").attr("id");

jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/tbEq6/

Answer 2

var curTab = $jQuery('#tabs .ui-tabs-panel:not(.ui-tabs-hide)').attr('id');

Answer 3

As I posted in an answer to this question, there are several ways to achieve this.

On the jQuery documents, they propose to do the following to find the index of the currently open tab:

var $tabs = $('#example').tabs();
var selected = $tabs.tabs('option', 'selected'); // => 0

However, this is impractical if you need to do a lot with that tab. Why they don't yet provide a more practical solution of getting the actual element, I'm unsure, however, through use of jQuery there is an easy solution you can create yourself.

In the following code i'll show you just how easy it is to do anything you want with the current tab:

var curTab = $('.ui-tabs-panel:not(.ui-tabs-hide)'),
    curTabIndex = curTab.index(),  //  will get you the index number of where it sits
    curTabID = curTab.prop("id"),  //  will give you the id of the tab open if existant
    curTabCls = curTab.attr("class");  //  will give you an array of classes on this tab
        //  etc ....
//    now, if you wanted a little more depth, for instance specific tabs area (if you have multiple tabs on your page) you can do simply add to your selector statement
var curTab = $('#myTabs_1 .ui-tabs-panel:not(.ui-tabs-hide)');
//    then you can make simple calls to that tab and get whatever data or manipulate it how you please
curTab.css("background-color", "#FFF");

Answer 4

You can use the :visible pseudo-selector to target the visible panel:

$("#tabs .ui-tabs-panel:visible").attr("id");

It's worth noting that you can retrieve the active tab from the activate event:

$("#tabs").tabs({
    activate: function (event, ui) {
        console.log(ui.newPanel[0].id);
    }
});