Find Active Tab using jQuery and Twitter Bootstrap

I've been racking my brain for a little while now, and I would like to know if anyone out there knows how I can find the active tab, using jQuery and Twitter's Bootstrap. Pulling the hash from the URL is not my first option, I'm using the data-toggle attribute in the <a> link so there is no need to produce a URL hash.

Any insight? Here's an example of my markup:

<ul class="nav nav-list" id="sampleTabs">
    <li><a href="#example" data-toggle="tab">Tab 1</a></li>
</ul>
<div class="tab-content">
    <div class="tab-pane fade active in" id="example">
        Example Tab
    </div>
</div>

<script>
$('#sampleTabs a:first').tab('show');
</script>

I'm open to any suggestion - using a PHP session, JS cookie, etc.

Edit: This is the real issue. I have a pagination system using PHP, so when a page number or next/prev arrow is clicked, it will reload the page. This is why I need to find the active tab before loading the next page, since I"ll just pass it in the url or session, etc.

Solution 1:

Twitter Bootstrap assigns the active class to the li element that represents the active tab:

$("ul#sampleTabs li.active")

An alternative is to bind the shown event of each tab, and save the active tab:

var activeTab = null;
$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown', function (e) {
  activeTab = e.target;
})

Solution 2:

Here is the answer for those of you who need a Boostrap 3 solution.

In bootstrap 3 use 'shown.bs.tab' instead of 'shown' in the next line

// tab
$('#rowTab a:first').tab('show');

$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
//show selected tab / active
 console.log ( $(e.target).attr('id') );
});

Solution 3:

First of all you need to remove the data-toggle attribute. We will use some JQuery, so make sure you include it.

  <ul class='nav nav-tabs'>
    <li class='active'><a href='#home'>Home</a></li>
    <li><a href='#menu1'>Menu 1</a></li>
    <li><a href='#menu2'>Menu 2</a></li>
    <li><a href='#menu3'>Menu 3</a></li>
  </ul>

  <div class='tab-content'>
    <div id='home' class='tab-pane fade in active'>
      <h3>HOME</h3>
    <div id='menu1' class='tab-pane fade'>
      <h3>Menu 1</h3>
    </div>
    <div id='menu2' class='tab-pane fade'>
      <h3>Menu 2</h3>
    </div>
    <div id='menu3' class='tab-pane fade'>
      <h3>Menu 3</h3>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
// Handling data-toggle manually
    $('.nav-tabs a').click(function(){
        $(this).tab('show');
    });
// The on tab shown event
    $('.nav-tabs a').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
        alert('Hello from the other siiiiiide!');
        var current_tab = e.target;
        var previous_tab = e.relatedTarget;
    });
});
</script>