Twitter Bootstrap Tabs: Go to Specific Tab on Page Reload or Hyperlink

Solution 1:

Here is my solution to the problem, a bit late perhaps. But it could maybe help others:

// Javascript to enable link to tab
var hash = location.hash.replace(/^#/, '');  // ^ means starting, meaning only match the first hash
if (hash) {
    $('.nav-tabs a[href="#' + hash + '"]').tab('show');
} 

// Change hash for page-reload
$('.nav-tabs a').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
    window.location.hash = e.target.hash;
})

Solution 2:

UPDATE

For Bootstrap 3, change .on('shown', ...) to .on('shown.bs.tab', ....)

This is based off of @dubbe answer and this SO accepted answer. It handles the issue with window.scrollTo(0,0) not working correctly. The problem is that when you replace the url hash on tab shown, the browser will scroll to that hash since its an element on the page. To get around this, add a prefix so the hash doesn't reference an actual page element

// Javascript to enable link to tab
var hash = document.location.hash;
var prefix = "tab_";
if (hash) {
    $('.nav-tabs a[href="'+hash.replace(prefix,"")+'"]').tab('show');
} 

// Change hash for page-reload
$('.nav-tabs a').on('shown', function (e) {
    window.location.hash = e.target.hash.replace("#", "#" + prefix);
});

Example of use

If you have tab-pane with id="mytab" you need to put your link like this:

<a href="yoursite.com/#tab_mytab">Go to Specific Tab </a>

Solution 3:

you could trigger a click event on the corresponding tab link:

$(document).ready(function(){

  if(window.location.hash != "") {
      $('a[href="' + window.location.hash + '"]').click()
  }

});

Solution 4:

This is an improved implementation of dubbe's solution which prevent scrolling.

// Javascript to enable link to tab
var url = document.location.toString();
if (url.match('#')) {
    $('.nav-tabs a[href="#'+url.split('#')[1]+'"]').tab('show') ;
} 

// With HTML5 history API, we can easily prevent scrolling!
$('.nav-tabs a').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
    if(history.pushState) {
        history.pushState(null, null, e.target.hash); 
    } else {
        window.location.hash = e.target.hash; //Polyfill for old browsers
    }
})