How to set bootstrap navbar active class with Angu

Question

If I have a navbar in bootstrap with the items

Home | About | Contact

How do I set the active class for each menu item when they are active? That is, how can I set class="active" when the angular route is at

1. #/ for home
2. #/about for the about page
3. #/contact for the contact page

Answer 1

If you would rather not use AngularStrap then this directive should do the trick!. This is a modification of https://stackoverflow.com/a/16231859/910764.

JavaScript

angular.module('myApp').directive('bsNavbar', ['$location', function ($location) {
  return {
    restrict: 'A',
    link: function postLink(scope, element) {
      scope.$watch(function () {
        return $location.path();
      }, function (path) {
        angular.forEach(element.children(), (function (li) {
          var $li = angular.element(li),
            regex = new RegExp('^' + $li.attr('data-match-route') + '$', 'i'),
            isActive = regex.test(path);
          $li.toggleClass('active', isActive);
        }));
      });
    }
  };
}]);

HTML

<ul class="nav navbar-nav" bs-navbar>
  <li data-match-route="/home"><a href="#/home">Home</a></li>
  <li data-match-route="/about"><a href="#/about">About</a></li>
</ul>

Note: The above HTML classes assume you are using Bootstrap 3.x

Answer 2

You can actually use angular-ui-utils' ui-route directive:

<a ui-route ng-href="/">Home</a>
<a ui-route ng-href="/about">About</a>
<a ui-route ng-href="/contact">Contact</a>

or:

Header Controller

/**
 * Header controller
 */
angular.module('myApp')
  .controller('HeaderCtrl', function ($scope) {
    $scope.menuItems = [
      {
        name: 'Home',
        url:  '/',
        title: 'Go to homepage.'
      },
      {
        name:   'About',
        url:    '/about',
        title:  'Learn about the project.'
      },
      {
        name:   'Contact',
        url:    '/contact',
        title:  'Contact us.'
      }
    ];
  });

Index page

<!-- index.html: -->
<div class="header" ng-controller="HeaderCtrl">
  <ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
    <li ui-route="{{menuItem.url}}" ng-class="{active: $uiRoute}"
      ng-repeat="menuItem in menuItems">
      <a ng-href="#{{menuItem.url}}" title="{{menuItem.title}}">
        {{menuItem.name}}
      </a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

If you're using ui-utils, you may also be interested in ui-router for managing partial/nested views.

Answer 3

You can achieve this with a conditional in an angular expression, such as:

<a href="#" class="{{ condition ? 'active' : '' }}">link</a>

That being said, I do find an angular directive to be the more "proper" way of doing it, even though outsourcing a lot of this mini-logic can somewhat pollute your code base.

I use conditionals for GUI styling every once in a while during development, because it's a little quicker than creating directives. I couldn't tell you an instance though in which they actually remained in the code base for long. In the end I either turn it into a directive or find a better way to solve the problem.

Answer 4

I just wrote a directive to handle this, so you can simply add the attribute bs-active-link to the parent <ul> element, and any time the route changed, it will find the matching link, and add the active class to the corresponding <li>.

You can see it in action here: http://jsfiddle.net/8mcedv3b/

Example HTML:

<ul class="nav navbar-nav" bs-active-link>
  <li><a href="/home">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
</ul>

Javascript:

angular.module('appName')
.directive('bsActiveLink', ['$location', function ($location) {
return {
    restrict: 'A', //use as attribute 
    replace: false,
    link: function (scope, elem) {
        //after the route has changed
        scope.$on("$routeChangeSuccess", function () {
            var hrefs = ['/#' + $location.path(),
                         '#' + $location.path(), //html5: false
                         $location.path()]; //html5: true
            angular.forEach(elem.find('a'), function (a) {
                a = angular.element(a);
                if (-1 !== hrefs.indexOf(a.attr('href'))) {
                    a.parent().addClass('active');
                } else {
                    a.parent().removeClass('active');   
                };
            });     
        });
    }
}
}]);

Answer 5

You can also use this active-link directive https://stackoverflow.com/a/23138152/1387163

Parent li will get active class when location matches /url:

<li>
    <a href="#!/url" active-link active-link-parent>
</li>

Answer 6

If you are working with Angular router, the RouterLinkActive directive can be used really elegantly:

<ul class="navbar-nav">
  <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" routerLink="home" routerLinkActive="active">Home</a></li>
  <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" routerLink="gallery" routerLinkActive="active">Gallery</a></li>
  <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" routerLink="pricing" routerLinkActive="active">Prices</a></li>
  <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" routerLink="contact" routerLinkActive="active">Contact</a></li>
</ul>