Bootstrap 3: Keep selected tab on page refresh

Question

I prefer storing the selected tab in the hashvalue of the window. This also enables sending links to colleagues, who than see "the same" page. The trick is to change the hash of the location when another tab is selected. If you already use # in your page, possibly the hash tag has to be split. In my app, I use ":" as hash value separator.

<ul class="nav nav-tabs" id="myTab">
  <li class="active"><a href="#home">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="#profile">Profile</a></li>
  <li><a href="#messages">Messages</a></li>
  <li><a href="#settings">Settings</a></li>
</ul>

<div class="tab-content">
  <div class="tab-pane active" id="home">home</div>
  <div class="tab-pane" id="profile">profile</div>
  <div class="tab-pane" id="messages">messages</div>
  <div class="tab-pane" id="settings">settings</div>
</div>

JavaScript, has to be embedded after the above in a <script>...</script> part.

$('#myTab a').click(function(e) {
  e.preventDefault();
  $(this).tab('show');
});

// store the currently selected tab in the hash value
$("ul.nav-tabs > li > a").on("shown.bs.tab", function(e) {
  var id = $(e.target).attr("href").substr(1);
  window.location.hash = id;
});

// on load of the page: switch to the currently selected tab
var hash = window.location.hash;
$('#myTab a[href="' + hash + '"]').tab('show');

This is the best one that I tried:

$(document).ready(function() {
    if (location.hash) {
        $("a[href='" + location.hash + "']").tab("show");
    }
    $(document.body).on("click", "a[data-toggle='tab']", function(event) {
        location.hash = this.getAttribute("href");
    });
});
$(window).on("popstate", function() {
    var anchor = location.hash || $("a[data-toggle='tab']").first().attr("href");
    $("a[href='" + anchor + "']").tab("show");
});

A mix between others answers:

• No jump on click
• Save on location hash
• Save on localStorage (e.g: for form submit)

• Just copy&paste ;)

  if (location.hash) {
    $('a[href=\'' + location.hash + '\']').tab('show');
  }
  var activeTab = localStorage.getItem('activeTab');
  if (activeTab) {
    $('a[href="' + activeTab + '"]').tab('show');
  }
  
  $('body').on('click', 'a[data-toggle=\'tab\']', function (e) {
    e.preventDefault()
    var tab_name = this.getAttribute('href')
    if (history.pushState) {
      history.pushState(null, null, tab_name)
    }
    else {
      location.hash = tab_name
    }
    localStorage.setItem('activeTab', tab_name)
  
    $(this).tab('show');
    return false;
  });
  $(window).on('popstate', function () {
    var anchor = location.hash ||
      $('a[data-toggle=\'tab\']').first().attr('href');
    $('a[href=\'' + anchor + '\']').tab('show');
  });
  

Xavi's code was allmost fully working. But when navigating to another page, submitting a form, then being redirected to the page with my tabs was not loading the saved tab at all.

localStorage to the rescue (slightly changed Nguyen's code):

$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').click(function (e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    $(this).tab('show');
});

$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on("shown.bs.tab", function (e) {
    var id = $(e.target).attr("href");
    localStorage.setItem('selectedTab', id)
});

var selectedTab = localStorage.getItem('selectedTab');
if (selectedTab != null) {
    $('a[data-toggle="tab"][href="' + selectedTab + '"]').tab('show');
}