Angular-ui-router: ui-sref-active and nested states

I am using angular-ui-router and nested states in my application, and I also have a navigation bar. The nav bar is hand written, and uses ui-sref-active to highlight the current state. It is a two-level navigation bar.

Now, when I am in, say Products / Categories I would like both Products (in level 1) and Categories (in level 2) to be highlighted. However, using ui-sref-active, if I am in state Products.Categories then only that state is highlighted, not Products.

Is there some way to make Products highlight in that state?


Instead of this-

<li ui-sref-active="active">
    <a ui-sref="posts.details">Posts</a>
</li>

You can do this-

<li ng-class="{active: $state.includes('posts')}">
    <a ui-sref="posts.details">Posts</a>
</li>

Currently it doesn't work. There is a discussion going on here (https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router/pull/927) And, it will be added soon.

UPDATE:

For this to work, $state should be available in view.

angular.module('xyz').controller('AbcController', ['$scope', '$state', function($scope, $state) {
   $scope.$state = $state;
}]);

More Info

UPDATE [2]:

As of version 0.2.11, it works out of the box. Please check the related issue: https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router/issues/818


Here's an option for when you are nesting multiple states that are not hierarchically related and you don't have a controller available for the view. You can use the UI-Router filter includedByState to check your current state against any number of named states.

<a ui-sref="production.products" ng-class="{active: ('production.products' | 
includedByState) || ('planning.products' | includedByState) || 
('production.categories' | includedByState) || 
('planning.categories' | includedByState)}">
  Items
</a>

TL;DR: Multiple, unrelated, named states need to apply an active class on the same link and you have no controller? Use includedByState.