Question

I have the following code which gets the id of the currently selected jquery-ui-tab:

$($('[id^="tab"], [id^="home"]')).live('click', function() {
    alert($(this).attr("id"));
});

As you can see, I have 2 sets of tabs, tab(n) and home(n).

This works fine, except that I need to be able to get the id at any point in time, not when the tab is selected, the code above only gets the id when a tab is selected.

How do I get the id of the jquery-ui-tabs home(n) and tab(n) using a standard button clicked i.e.

$("#button_one").click(function(event) { 
    // get id of selected tab
});

Answer 1

$('.ui-tabs-selected').prop('id');

jQuery version < 1.6:

$('.ui-tabs-selected').attr('id');

Note that I would change your first function to:

$($('[id^="tab"], [id^="home"]')).live('click', function() {
    alert(this.id);
});

And don’t use live unless your jQuery version is < 1.4.4

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A way to get the index:

…retrieve the index of the currently selected tab

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