jQuery “active” class assignment

Question

All I am trying to accomplish is to be able to have an unordered list of links in which one is clicked, the parent list item is assigned the class \"active.\" Once another l

Answer 1

This question is a bit old now, but I think there's still space for improvement.

"Traditional" local event binding:

$("ul a").click(function(){
    $(this).parent("li").addClass("active")
        .siblings().removeClass("active");

    # return false to cancel the default action (e.g. follow the link):
    return false;
});

Now, the same using event delegation via delegate() (jQuery +1.4.2). Lets you dynamically add extra >li>a without having to rebind the event:

$("ul").delegate("a", "click", function(){
    $(this).parent("li").addClass("active")
        .siblings().removeClass("active");

    # return false to cancel the default action
    # and prevent it from bubbling (further) up:
    return false;
});

Change "ul" to anything that matches exclusively the desired list(s), e.g. ".linksList", "#nav", etc.