jQuery Navigation add active class

Question

Somehow my Code has trouble with adding active classes. If the first Menu is selected than it adds to <nav> , to itself <li> and to the next <li> the active class.

<nav id="cssmenu" class="sidebox_content active">
    <ul class="navmenu">
        <li class="active">
            <a href="Neu-im-Sortiment">Neue Produkte</a>
        </li>
        <li class="has-sub top-cat active"></li>
    </ul>
</nav>

This is the Javascript that I am using for it

$(document).ready(function () {

    var url = window.location;
    // Will only work if string in href matches with location
    $('ul.navmenu a[href="' + url + '"]').parent().addClass('active');

    // Will also work for relative and absolute hrefs
    $('ul.navmenu a').filter(function () {
        return this.href == url;
    }).parent().addClass('active').parent().parent().addClass('active');
});

If the second List is clicked than everything is working like a charm. Are the .partent() wrong ?

Answer 1

I'm assuming the following:

• You are trying to add a class of active to the li and nav ancestor elements that contain the a ;
• The url contains the href of Neu-im-Sortiment somewhere in the path (eg, " http://example.com/products/Neu-im-Sortiment ")

I suspect the main problem is that window.location is an object, not a string. For this post's url, it looks like this:

window.location = {
    "ancestorOrigins": {
        "length": 0
    },
    "origin": "http://stackoverflow.com",
    "hash": "",
    "search": "",
    "pathname": "/questions/23985401/jquery-navigation-add-active-class",
    "port": "",
    "hostname": "stackoverflow.com",
    "host": "stackoverflow.com",
    "protocol": "http:",
    "href": "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23985401/jquery-navigation-add-active-class"
};

You could use window.location.href , but the full URL is not likely to be useful for your purposes. Try window.location.pathname instead.

$(document).ready(function () {
    "use strict";
    var path = window.location.pathname, // skip the domain and truncate any hashtag nonsense and/or url parameters 
        link = $('ul.navmenu a').filter(function (i) {
            var startOfPath = path.indexOf(this.href) === 1, // pathname starts with a slash
                anywhereInPath = path.indexOf(this.href) > -1,
                endOfPath = path.indexOf(this.href) === path.length - this.href.length;
            return startOfPath || anywhereInPath || endOfPath; // anywhereInPath is most likely to be true
        }),
        li = link.parents('li'), // to get the LI element, or you could do link.parent(), since the LI is the immediate ancestor
        nav = link.parents('nav'); // to get the NAV element, or you could do li.parents('nav'), or you could do li.parent().parent() (etc.)
        li.addClass('active'); // add class to LI
        nav.addClass('active'); // add class to NAV
        // or you could do both with the same call:
        //  $(li, nav).addClass('active');
});

Compacted syntax (chaining it all):

$(document).ready(function () {
    "use strict";
    var path = window.location.pathname;
    $('ul.navmenu a').filter(function (i) { // this selects all A elements that have an ancestor UL with class "navmenu"
        var existsInPath = yourLogic(); // and returns only those that match this criteria
        return existsInPath;
    }).parents('li').addClass('active').parents('nav').addClass('active');
});