Twitter Bootstrap Tabs: Go to Specific Tab on Page Reload or Hyperlink

Here is my solution to the problem, a bit late perhaps. But it could maybe help others:

// Javascript to enable link to tab
var hash = location.hash.replace(/^#/, '');  // ^ means starting, meaning only match the first hash
if (hash) {
    $('.nav-tabs a[href="#' + hash + '"]').tab('show');
} 

// Change hash for page-reload
$('.nav-tabs a').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
    window.location.hash = e.target.hash;
})

UPDATE

For Bootstrap 3, change .on('shown', ...) to .on('shown.bs.tab', ....)

This is based off of @dubbe answer and this SO accepted answer. It handles the issue with window.scrollTo(0,0) not working correctly. The problem is that when you replace the url hash on tab shown, the browser will scroll to that hash since its an element on the page. To get around this, add a prefix so the hash doesn't reference an actual page element

// Javascript to enable link to tab
var hash = document.location.hash;
var prefix = "tab_";
if (hash) {
    $('.nav-tabs a[href="'+hash.replace(prefix,"")+'"]').tab('show');
} 

// Change hash for page-reload
$('.nav-tabs a').on('shown', function (e) {
    window.location.hash = e.target.hash.replace("#", "#" + prefix);
});

Example of use

If you have tab-pane with id="mytab" you need to put your link like this:

<a href="yoursite.com/#tab_mytab">Go to Specific Tab </a>

you could trigger a click event on the corresponding tab link:

$(document).ready(function(){

  if(window.location.hash != "") {
      $('a[href="' + window.location.hash + '"]').click()
  }

});

This is an improved implementation of dubbe's solution which prevent scrolling.

// Javascript to enable link to tab
var url = document.location.toString();
if (url.match('#')) {
    $('.nav-tabs a[href="#'+url.split('#')[1]+'"]').tab('show') ;
} 

// With HTML5 history API, we can easily prevent scrolling!
$('.nav-tabs a').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
    if(history.pushState) {
        history.pushState(null, null, e.target.hash); 
    } else {
        window.location.hash = e.target.hash; //Polyfill for old browsers
    }
})

While the JavaScript solution provided may work, I went a slightly different way that requires no additional JavaScript, but does require logic in your view. You create a link with a standard URL parameter, like:

<a href = "http://link.to.yourpage?activeTab=home">My Link</a>

Then you simply detect the value of activeTab to write 'class="active"' in the appropriate <li>

Pseudocode (implement accordingly in your language). Note I've set 'home' tab as a default active if no parameter provided in this example.

$activetabhome = (params.activeTab is null or params.activeTab == 'home') ? 'class="active"' : '';
$activetabprofile = (params.activeTab == 'profile') ? 'class="active"' : '';

<li $activetabhome><a href="#home">Home</a></li>
<li $activetabprofile><a href="#profile">Profile</a></li>

I am not a big fan of if...else; so I took a simpler approach.

$(document).ready(function(event) {
    $('ul.nav.nav-tabs a:first').tab('show'); // Select first tab
    $('ul.nav.nav-tabs a[href="'+ window.location.hash+ '"]').tab('show'); // Select tab by name if provided in location hash
    $('ul.nav.nav-tabs a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown', function (event) {    // Update the location hash to current tab
        window.location.hash= event.target.hash;
    })
});

Pick a default tab (usually the first) Switch to tab (if such an element is indeed present; let jQuery handle it); Nothing happens if a wrong hash is specified [Optional] Update the hash if another tab is manually chosen

Doesn't address scrolling to requested hash; but should it?

For Bootstrap 3:

$('.nav-tabs a[href="#' + tabID + '"]').tab('show');

https://jsfiddle.net/DTcHh/6638/

This works in Bootstrap 3 and improves dubbe and flynfish 's 2 top answers by integrating GarciaWebDev 's answer as well (which allows for url parameters after the hash and is straight from Bootstrap authors on the github issue tracker):

// Javascript to enable link to tab
var hash = document.location.hash;
var prefix = "tab_";

if (hash) {
    hash = hash.replace(prefix,'');
    var hashPieces = hash.split('?');
    activeTab = $('.nav-tabs a[href=' + hashPieces[0] + ']');
    activeTab && activeTab.tab('show');
} 

// Change hash for page-reload
$('.nav-tabs a').on('shown', function (e) {
    window.location.hash = e.target.hash.replace("#", "#" + prefix);
});

Building on Demircan Celebi's solution; I wanted the tab to open when modifying the url and open tab without having to reload the page from the server.

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function() {
        openTabHash(); // for the initial page load
        window.addEventListener("hashchange", openTabHash, false); // for later changes to url
    });


    function openTabHash()
    {
        console.log('openTabHash');
        // Javascript to enable link to tab
        var url = document.location.toString();
        if (url.match('#')) {
            $('.nav-tabs a[href="#'+url.split('#')[1]+'"]').tab('show') ;
        } 

        // With HTML5 history API, we can easily prevent scrolling!
        $('.nav-tabs a').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
            if(history.pushState) {
                history.pushState(null, null, e.target.hash); 
            } else {
                window.location.hash = e.target.hash; //Polyfill for old browsers
            }
        })
    }
</script>

This code selects the right tab depending on the #hash and adds the right #hash when a tab is clicked. (this uses jquery)

In Coffeescript :

$(document).ready ->
    if location.hash != ''
        $('a[href="'+location.hash+'"]').tab('show')

    $('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on 'shown', (e) ->
        location.hash = $(e.target).attr('href').substr(1)

or in JS :

$(document).ready(function() {
    if (location.hash !== '') $('a[href="' + location.hash + '"]').tab('show');
    return $('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown', function(e) {
      return location.hash = $(e.target).attr('href').substr(1);
    });
});

$(function(){
  var hash = window.location.hash;
  hash && $('ul.nav a[href="' + hash + '"]').tab('show');
});

This code from http://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/2415#issuecomment-4450768 worked for me perfectly.

@flynfish + @Ztyx solution that I use for nested tabs:

    handleTabLinks();

    function handleTabLinks() {
        if(window.location.hash == '') {
            window.location.hash = window.location.hash + '#_';
        }
        var hash = window.location.hash.split('#')[1];
        var prefix = '_';
        var hpieces = hash.split('/');
        for (var i=0;i<hpieces.length;i++) {
            var domelid = hpieces[i].replace(prefix,'');
            var domitem = $('a[href=#' + domelid + '][data-toggle=tab]');
            if (domitem.length > 0) {
                domitem.tab('show');
            }
        }
        $('a[data-toggle=tab]').on('shown', function (e) {
            if ($(this).hasClass('nested')) {
                var nested = window.location.hash.split('/');
                window.location.hash = nested[0] + '/' + e.target.hash.split('#')[1];
            } else {
                window.location.hash = e.target.hash.replace('#', '#' + prefix);
            }
        });
    }

childrens should have class="nested"

I came up with a solution that uses the url hash or localStorage depending on the availability of the latter with below code:

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

    var hash = window.location.hash;
    var activeTab = localStorage.getItem('activeTab');

    if(hash){
          $('#project-tabs  a[href="' + hash + '"]').tab('show');   
    }else if (activeTab){
        $('#project-tabs a[href="' + activeTab + '"]').tab('show');
    }
});

I would suggest you use the code provided by Bootstrap authors on their issue tracker on GitHub:

var hash = location.hash
  , hashPieces = hash.split('?')
  , activeTab = $('[href=' + hashPieces[0] + ']');
activeTab && activeTab.tab('show');

You can find on the link to the issue more information about why they didn't choose to support that.

Tried couple of ways discussed above and end up with following working solution, just copy and paste in your editor to try. To test just change hash to inbox, outbox, compose in url and hit enter key.

<html>
    <head>
        <link type='text/css' rel='stylesheet' href='https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.0.0/css/bootstrap.min.css' />
        <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.2.0.min.js"></script>
        <script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.0.0/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div class="container body-content">
            <ul class="nav nav-tabs">
                <li class="active"><a data-toggle="tab" href="#inbox">Inbox</a></li>
                <li><a data-toggle="tab" href="#outbox">Outbox</a></li>
                <li><a data-toggle="tab" href="#compose">Compose</a></li>
            </ul>
            <div class="tab-content">
                <div id="inbox" class="tab-pane fade in active">
                    Inbox Content
                </div>
                <div id="outbox" class="tab-pane fade">
                    Outbox Content
                </div>
                <div id="compose" class="tab-pane fade">
                    Compose Content
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
        <script>
            $(function () {
                var hash = window.location.hash;
                hash && $('ul.nav a[href="' + hash + '"]').tab('show');
            });
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

Hope this will save your time.

Just insert this code on your page:

$(function(){ var hash = window.location.hash; hash && $('ul.nav a[href="' + hash + '"]').tab('show'); $('.nav-tabs a').click(function (e) { $(this).tab('show'); var scrollmem = $('body').scrollTop(); window.location.hash = this.hash; $('html,body').scrollTop(scrollmem); }); });

Here is what i did, really simple, and provided your tab links have an ID associated with them you can get the href attribute and pass that over to the function that shows the tab contents:

<script type="text/javascript">
        jQuery(document).ready(function() {
            var hash = document.location.hash;
            var prefix = "tab_";
            if (hash) {
                var tab = jQuery(hash.replace(prefix,"")).attr('href');
                jQuery('.nav-tabs a[href='+tab+']').tab('show');
            }
        });
        </script>

Then in your url you can add the hash as something like: #tab_tab1, the 'tab_' part is removed from the hash itself so the ID of the actual tab link in the nav-tabs (tabid1) is placed after this, so your url would look something like: www.mydomain.com/index.php#tab_tabid1.

This works perfect for me and hope it helps someone else :-)

If it matters to anybody, the following code is small and works flawless, to get a single hash value from the URL and show that:

<script>
    window.onload = function () {
        let url = document.location.toString();
        let splitHash = url.split("#");
        if (splitHash[1]) {document.getElementById(splitHash[1]).click();}
    };
</script>

what it does is it retrieves the id and fires the click event. Simple.

This is my solution to handle nested tabs. I just added a function to check if the active tab has a parent tab to be activated. This is the function:

function activateParentTab(tab) {
    $('.tab-pane').each(function() {
        var cur_tab = $(this);
        if ( $(this).find('#' + tab).length > 0 ) {
            $('.nav-tabs a[href=#'+ cur_tab.attr('id') +']').tab('show');
            return false;
        }
    });
}

And can be called like this (Based on @flynfish's solution):

var hash = document.location.hash;
var prefix = "";
if (hash) {
    $('.nav-tabs a[href='+hash.replace(prefix,"")+']').tab('show');
    activateParentTab(hash);
} 

// Change hash for page-reload
$('.nav-tabs a').on('shown', function (e) {
    window.location.hash = e.target.hash.replace("#", "#" + prefix);
});

This solution works pretty fine to me at the moment. Hope this can be useful for someone else ;)

I had to modify some bits for this to work for me. I am using Bootstrap 3 and jQuery 2

// Javascript to enable link to tab
var hash = document.location.hash;
var prefix = "!";
if (hash) {
    hash = hash.replace(prefix,'');
    var hashPieces = hash.split('?');
    activeTab = $('[role="tablist"] a[href=' + hashPieces[0] + ']');
    activeTab && activeTab.tab('show');
}

// Change hash for page-reload
$('[role="tablist"] a').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
    window.location.hash = e.target.hash.replace("#", "#" + prefix);
});

I just had this issue, but needed to handle multiple tab levels. The code is rather ugly (see comments), but does its job: https://gist.github.com/JensRantil/4721860 Hopefully someone else will find it useful (and feel free to propose better solutions!).

Combining peices from other answers, here is a solution that can open many levels of nested tabs:

// opens all tabs down to the specified tab
var hash = location.hash.split('?')[0];
if(hash) {
  var $link = $('[href=' + hash + ']');
  var parents = $link.parents('.tab-pane').get();
  $(parents.reverse()).each(function() {
    $('[href=#' + this.id + ']').tab('show') ;
  });
  $link.tab('show');
}

I make sth like this for links with ajax #!# (e.g./test.com#!#test3) but you can modify it whatever you like

$(document).ready(function() {

       let hash = document.location.hash;
       let prefix = "!#";

       //change hash url on page reload
       if (hash) {
         $('.nav-tabs a[href=\"'+hash.replace(prefix,"")+'\"]').tab('show');
       } 

       // change hash url on switch tab
       $('.nav-tabs a').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
          window.location.hash = e.target.hash.replace("#", "#" + prefix);
       });
 });

Example with simple page on Github here

I know this thread is very old, but I'll leave here my own implementation:

$(function () {
  // some initialization code

  addTabBehavior()
})

// Initialize events and change tab on first page load.
function addTabBehavior() {
  $('.nav-tabs a').on('show.bs.tab', e => {
    window.location.hash = e.target.hash.replace('nav-', '')
  })

  $(window).on('popstate', e => {
    changeTab()
  })

  changeTab()
}

// Change the current tab and URL hash; if don't have any hash
// in URL, so activate the first tab and update the URL hash.
function changeTab() {
  const hash = getUrlHash()

  if (hash) {
    $(`.nav-tabs a[href="#nav-${hash}"]`).tab('show')
  } else {
    $('.nav-tabs a').first().tab('show')
  }
}

// Get the hash from URL. Ex: www.example.com/#tab1
function getUrlHash() {
  return window.location.hash.slice(1)
}

Note that I'm using a nav- class prefix to nav links.

Building on Peter's answer, and incorporating https://stackoverflow.com/a/901144/1604205, here's the code in JS:

<script>
    const params = new Proxy(new URLSearchParams(window.location.search), {
        get: (searchParams, prop) => searchParams.get(prop),
    });
    $activetabhome = (params.activeTab === null || params.activeTab == 'home') ? 'class="active"' : '';
    $activetabprofile = (params.activeTab == 'profile') ? 'class="active"' : '';
</script>
<li $activetabhome><a href="#home">Home</a></li>
<li $activetabprofile><a href="#profile">Profile</a></li>