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Remembering Active Tab in JQuery UI Tabs

Posted (Updated ) in Uncategorized

If you refresh or come back to a site often, it’s handy to have JQuery UI tabs remember which tab you were last on as you left. This simple script will handle that for you:

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jQuery(function($) {
    var index = 'qpsstats-active-tab';
    //  Define friendly data store name
    var dataStore = window.sessionStorage;
    var oldIndex = 0;
    //  Start magic!
    try {
        // getter: Fetch previous value
        oldIndex = dataStore.getItem(index);
    } catch(e) {}
 
    $( "#tabs" ).tabs({        active: oldIndex,
        activate: function(event, ui) {
            //  Get future value
            var newIndex = ui.newTab.parent().children().index(ui.newTab);
            //  Set future value
            try {
                dataStore.setItem( index, newIndex );
            } catch(e) {}
        }
    });
});

No other code is necessary. Add your tab markup as you normally would (Remember to give it a matching ID):

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<div id="tabs">	<ul>
		<li><a href="#tabs-1">Tab 1</a></li>
		<li><a href="#tabs-2">Tab 2</a></li>
		<li><a href="#tabs-3">Tab 3</a></li>
	</ul>
	<div id="tabs-1">
		first tab
	</div>
	<div id="tabs-2">
		second tab
	</div>
	<div id="tabs-3">
		third tab
	</div>
</div>

 

Demo