Question

In a site navigation bar, I have some logic that determines which page the user is currently viewing, and gives that menu-item an .active class.

The code I came up with does work, though it doesn’t feel very elegant. Can you think of a way to do this better? How could I move the logic out of the view and into the controller? How can I stop repeating myself?

The controller:

<?php

class Pages extends CI_Controller {

    public function view ($page = 'home') {

        if (!file_exists('application/views/pages/'.$page.'.php'))
            show_404();

        $data['active'] = $page;

        $this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
        $this->load->view('pages/'.$page, $data);
        $this->load->view('templates/footer', $data);

    }
}

?>

The view:

<ul class="nav">
    <li class="<?php echo($active=='home')?'active':''; ?>"><a href="./">blog</a></li>
    <li class="<?php echo($active=='about')?'active':''; ?>"><a href="about">about</a></li>
    <li class="<?php echo($active=='projects')?'active':''; ?>"><a href="projects">projects</a></li>
    <li class="<?php echo($active=='lab')?'active':''; ?>"><a href="lab">lab</a></li>
    <li class="<?php echo($active=='contact')?'active':''; ?>"><a href="contact">contact</a></li>
</ul>

Answer 1

Maybe more elegant ?

    function is_active($item) {
        return strpos(uri_string(), $item)!==FALSE ? 'active':'';
    }


    <li class="<?=is_active('blog')?>"><a href="./">blog</a></li>

This way depend of complexity of your uris.