Staying on current jQuery tab across post back?

Question

I am using jQuery tabs and an ASP.NET listview to display and edit some information. My problem is that when a user inserts a new record in one of the listview items my jQuery tabs go back to the first tab. Is there a way to keep track of which tab I am on or keep it from resting on post back?

Answer 1

There's built-in support for the jQuery cookie plugin (direct download). You use it like this:

$("#tabs").tabs({
  cookie: { expires: 7 }  //1 week
});

It's not the same as maintaining across postback, but it usually provides the desired effect.

Answer 2

You can get the current tab by doing this:

var selected = $tabs.tabs('option', 'selected');

You can then select the tab (upon completion of the POST) by doing this:

$tabs.tabs('select', selected);

Note that tab selection is 0-based indexing, so selecting 2 means selecting the third tab.

Answer 3

I'm not an .NET guy, but you can probably hook onto the form's submit() event and send the currently active tab to the server with your form data. In that fashion, you can simply select the proper tab on the server side when you actually generate the DOM and JS.

Something like...

$("#the_form").submit(function(){
  var $form            = $(this);
      selected_tab_idx = $("#the_tabs").tabs( "option", "selected" );
  $('<input />', {type: hidden, name: 'tab_index', value: selected_tab_idx}).appendTo( $form );
  return true;
});