Handling navigation tabs - use sessions?

Rails
1

I think this is a fairly easy question done several times in several
languages, but on a traditional ‘tab’ based navigation webpage, what’s
the best way to handle the active state?

I am using this in my view:

<% for category in @categories %>
<% if the condition is met to make this the active tab %>

  • <%= category.name %>

    • <% else %>
  • <%= category.name %>

    • <% end %>
    <% end %>

    @categories are all user defined in the database. Is the best way to
    handle this by setting up a session variable that tracks it?

    2

    you can also put something in your /config/routes.rb to add another
    variable
    like :page

    for example if your tabs all prefix with ‘/nav’ or something you can do
    this

    map.connect ‘/nav/:page’, :controller => “content”, :action => “index”

    then in the view you can do something like this inside your href to make
    it
    active

    <a href="/nav/tabname/" <%= “id=‘current’” if params[:page] == ‘tabname’
    %>>Tabname

    adam