title: jQuery - Active Link and Parent Relationship
body: <p>I am working on a navigation for a site and need some guidance on dynamically adding a class to the active link. In addition, once that link is established and I need to reference back to the parent and have it "show".</p>
  
  <p>This is what I am working with. The navigation is accordion style but does not use the Accordion UI. </p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;ul id="menu3"&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="{site_url}"&gt;Home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;&lt;a class="drop" href="#"&gt;Information&lt;/a&gt;
          &lt;ul&gt;
              &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="{site_url}information/audio"&gt;Audio&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
              &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="{site_url}information/video"&gt;Video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
              &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="{site_url}information/presentations"&gt;Presentations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;/ul&gt;
      &lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;&lt;a class="drop" href="#"&gt;Clinics&lt;/a&gt;
          &lt;ul&gt;
              &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="{site_url}clinics/one"&gt;Office 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
              &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="{site_url}clinics/two"&gt;Office 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;/ul&gt;
      &lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="{site_url}forms/"&gt;Forms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="{site_url}success_stories/index"&gt;Success Stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p></p>
  
  <p>Then I have a bit of jQuery to initially hide the submenu items:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$(function(){
  $('ul#menu3 ul').hide();                
  $('ul#menu3 &gt; li &gt; a.drop').click(function(){
  $(this).parent().children('ul').toggle("slow");
     return false;
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So far so good. Everything works.</p>
  
  <p>Now I would like to dynamically highlight the active link and I tried using:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var path = location.pathname.substring(1);
  if ( path )
  $('ul#menu3 a[href$="' + path + '"]').attr('class', 'selected');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but it doesn't seem to be enough to add the correct class.</p>
  
  <p>The last thing I need to do is to have the navigation open to the active group. For example if <strong>Audio</strong> is the current page, the <strong>Information</strong> section of the navigation accordion would be open to show the active link.</p>
  
  <p>I would really appreciate some help on this. Thanks.</p>