Active for Laravel

Active is a helper package for Laravel that makes it easy to recognize the current path or route, useful for adding 'active' classes (like those used in the Boostrap framework) and performing other actions only when a certain route is active. It also includes helpers for retrieving the current controller and action names.

Installation

First, simply require the package through Composer.

composer require watson/active

Using Laravel 5.1? The latest version of the package that will work for you is 2.0.4.

Next, add the service provider in your config/app.php file.

Watson\Active\ActiveServiceProvider::class

If you'd like to use the Facade instead of the helper functions, add it to the aliases array.

'Active' => Watson\Active\Facades\Active::class

Using Active

Helper functions

Active ships with a couple of helper functions which make it easy to use without the facade or creating an instance of your own.

active()
is_active()

Using active()

You pass an array of routes or paths you want to see are the current page, and if any match this function will return the string active, for Bootstrap. Alternatively, you can pass a custom return string as the second argument.

active(['login', 'users/*', 'posts.*', 'pages.contact']); // Returns 'active' if the current route matches any path or route name.

active(['login', 'logout'], 'active-class'); // Returns 'active-class' if the current route is 'login' or 'logout'.

active(['login', 'logout'], 'active-class', 'fallback-class'); // Returns 'fallback-class' if the current route is not 'login' or 'logout'.

In the first example, the function will return the string active if the current path is login, starts with users/ or if the name of the current route is posts.create.

Do note that a number of argument types are provided: you can use a path string, you can use a path string with a wildcard (using the *) and you can also use named routes.

You can use this function with your links to give them an active state.

<a href="{{ route('posts.index') }}" class="{{ active('posts.index') }}">All posts</a>

You can also provide certain paths or routes to be exluded when being considered.

active(['pages/*', 'not:pages/contact'])

active(['pages.*', 'not:pages.contact'])

Using is_active()

This works much the same as active(), you can pass the paths and routes to it but instead it will return a boolean if the current page matches.

@if (is_active('posts/*'))
    You're looking at a blog post!
@endif

Additional helpers

Two additional functions are provided to get the current controller and action, if your routing is being handled by a controller for a request. These functions will return the lowercase controller/action name, without the method of the request. Here is an example for a request that is routed to `FooController@getBar':

$controller = controller_name(); // foo

$action = action_name(); // bar