Make Twitter Bootstrap navbar link active

What's the standard way to make the active link in a Twitter Bootstrap navbar bolded? It's clear that a link gains the active appearance by gaining the "active" class. For example, the Home link below is active. When I click any link in the navbar, should a use jQuery to remove all classes from li elements and then add the active class to the link I've id'd?

<ul class="nav">
<li class="active"><a href="#">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link 3</a></li>
</ul>

EDIT: I included

<script type="text/javascript">
$('.nav li a').on('click', function() {
    alert('clicked');
    $(this).parent().parent().find('.active').removeClass('active');
    $(this).parent().addClass('active');
});
</script>

after the links. The alert appears when I click a link, but the "active" class is not added to the link.

Here's all of my navbar HTML:

<div class="navbar navbar-fixed-top">
    <div class="navbar-inner">
        <div class="container">
            <a class="brand" href="#">AuctionBase</a>
            <div class="nav-collapse">
                    <ul class="nav">
                        <li><a href="home.php">Search</a></li>
                        <li><a href="about.php">About</a></li>
                    </ul>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

Solution 1:

You need to ensure that you set the active class as part of the request response (as the page loads) and not before ie when the user clicks a link to request a different page.

First you need to determine which navlink should be set as active and then add the active class to the <li>. The code would look something like this

Tested by asker:

HTML within php file

Call a php function inline within the <li> markup passing in the links destination request uri

<ul class="nav">
    <li <?=echoActiveClassIfRequestMatches("home")?>>
        <a href="home.php">Search</a></li>
    <li <?=echoActiveClassIfRequestMatches("about")?>>
        <a href="about.php">About</a></li>
</ul>

PHP function

The php function simple needs to compare the passed in request uri and if it matches the current page being rendered output active class

<?php 

function echoActiveClassIfRequestMatches($requestUri)
{
    $current_file_name = basename($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], ".php");

    if ($current_file_name == $requestUri)
        echo 'class="active"';
}

?>

Solution 2:

http://totalprogus.blogspot.sk/2013/12/bootstrap-add-active-class-to-li.html

This tutorial has a great and ultimate solution for this "problem". I was dealing with it a while ago and working great for me, customizable as well

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('a[href="' + this.location.pathname + '"]').parent().addClass('active');
});

Solution 3:

If you do not want to deal with server side and in the case where all hrefs are simple, like '/page.php', you can call

$('.your-nav-container').find('a[href="' + location.pathname + '"]').parents('li').addClass('active');

after page is loaded.

Solution 4:

You can try:

$('.nav li a').on('click', function() {
    $(this).parent().parent().find('.active').removeClass('active');
    $(this).parent().addClass('active').css('font-weight', 'bold');
});

It would be best to give your nav an id attribute though, because you may have more than one nav on a page with the nav class.

$('#main-nav li a').on('click', function() {
    $(this).parent().parent().find('.active').removeClass('active');
    $(this).parent().addClass('active').css('font-weight', 'bold');
});

Alternatively, instead of using .css('font-weight', 'bold'), you could just put this in the stylesheet:

.active {
    font-weight: bold;
}