Add Active Navigation Class Based on URL

Avatar of Chris Coyier
Chris Coyier on

Ideally you output this class from the server side, but if you can’t…

Let’s say you have navigation like this:

<nav>
	<ul>
		<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
		<li><a href="/about/">About</a></li>
		<li><a href="/clients/">Clients</a></li>
		<li><a href="/contact/">Contact Us</a></li>
	</ul>
</nav>	

And you are at the URL:

http://yoursite.com/about/team/

And you want the About link to get a class of “active” so you can visually indicate it’s the active navigation.

$(function() {
  $('nav a[href^="/' + location.pathname.split("/")[1] + '"]').addClass('active');
});

Essentially that will match links in the nav who’s href attribute begins with “/about” (or whatever the secondary directory happens to be).