There is a UI-Router
directive:
ui-sref-active="class-name-to-use"
which from a version 0.2.11 does exactly what we need:
uiSrefActive:
BREAKING CHANGE: Also activate for child states. (bf163ad, closes #818)
uiSrefActiveEq: new directive with old ui-sref-active behavior
so, if we want just assign class for exact match, we have to use this: ui-sref-active-eq="class-name-to-use"
So, why are you experiencing: this is not working?
Because it is working only in conjunction with ui-sref
directive.
There is a working plunker
These won't work as expected:
// NOT working as expected
<a ui-sref-active="current" href="#/home">
<a ui-sref-active="current" href="#/home/child1">
<a ui-sref-active="current" href="#/home/child2">
But these will be working:
// conjunction ui-sref and ui-sref-active is working
<a ui-sref-active="current" ui-sref="home">
<a ui-sref-active="current" ui-sref="home.child1">
<a ui-sref-active="current" ui-sref="home.child2">
Check it in action here. Example uses this UI-Router 0.2.12 release - and this zip
EXTEND: Parent should be abstract, some of its children should always be selected
In that case, we can use another feature of the UI-Router
, the: $urlRouterProvider.when().
There is extended plunker So, with state definition like this:
// when 'home' is selected ... 'home.child2' is used for redirection
$urlRouterProvider.when('/home', '/home/child2');
// instead of 'other' - its 'other.child2' is used... could be any (e.g. other.child1)
$urlRouterProvider.when('/other', '/other/child2');
$urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/home/child2');
So, now, always child is selected (even if navigating to parent) and parent is getting its ui-sref-active
. Check it here