jQuery tabs - getting newly selected index

Question

I've previously used jquery-ui tabs extension to load page fragments via ajax, and to conceal or reveal hidden divs within a page. Both of these methods are well documented, and I've had no problems there.

Now, however, I want to do something different with tabs. When the user selects a tab, it should reload the page entirely - the reason for this is that the contents of each tabbed section are somewhat expensive to render, so I don't want to just send them all at once and use the normal method of toggling 'display:none' to reveal them.

My plan is to intercept the tabs' select event, and have that function reload the page with by manipulating document.location.

How, in the select handler, can I get the newly selected tab index and the html LI object it corresponds to?

$('#edit_tabs').tabs(  {
        selected: 2,     // which tab to start on when page loads
        select: function(e, ui) {
            var t = $(e.target);
            // alert("data is " +  t.data('load.tabs'));  // undef
            // alert("data is " +  ui.data('load.tabs'));  // undef

            // This gives a numeric index...
            alert( "selected is " + t.data('selected.tabs') )
            // ... but it's the index of the PREVIOUSLY selected tab, not the
            // one the user is now choosing.  
            return true;

            // eventual goal is: 
            // ... document.location= extract-url-from(something); return false;
        }
});

Is there an attribute of the event or ui object that I can read that will give the index, id, or object of the newly selected tab or the anchor tag within it?

Or is there a better way altogether to use tabs to reload the entire page?

Answer 1

A quick look into the documentation gives us the solution:

$('#edit_tabs').tabs({ selected: 2 }); 

The above statement will activate the third tab.

Answer 2

I would take a look at the events for Tabs. The following is taken from the jQuery docs:

 $('.ui-tabs-nav').bind('tabsselect', function(event, ui) {
     ui.options // options used to intialize this widget
     ui.tab // anchor element of the selected (clicked) tab
     ui.panel // element, that contains the contents of the selected (clicked) tab
     ui.index // zero-based index of the selected (clicked) tab
 });

Looks like ui.tab is the way to go.