Angularjs – Angular UI Router: How to get parent view to be “active” when navigating to nested view

UPDATE: Check out AngularUI's new project to address this problem

For subsections it's as easy as leveraging strings in ng-include:

<ul id="subNav">
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='section1/subpage1.htm'">Sub Page 1</a></li>
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='section1/subpage2.htm'">Sub Page 2</a></li>
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='section1/subpage3.htm'">Sub Page 3</a></li>
</ul>
<ng-include src="subPage"></ng-include>

Or you can create an object in case you have links to sub pages all over the place:

$scope.pages = { page1: 'section1/subpage1.htm', ... };

<ul id="subNav">
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='page1'">Sub Page 1</a></li>
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='page2'">Sub Page 2</a></li>
  <li><a ng-click="subPage='page3'">Sub Page 3</a></li>
</ul>
<ng-include src="pages[subPage]"></ng-include>

Or you can even use $routeParams

$routeProvider.when('/home', ...);
$routeProvider.when('/home/:tab', ...);
$scope.params = $routeParams;

<ul id="subNav">
  <li><a href="#/home/tab1">Sub Page 1</a></li>
  <li><a href="#/home/tab2">Sub Page 2</a></li>
  <li><a href="#/home/tab3">Sub Page 3</a></li>
</ul>
<ng-include src=" '/home/' + tab + '.html' "></ng-include>

You can also put an ng-controller at the top-most level of each partial

Each ng-repeat creates a child scope with the passed data, and also adds an additional $index variable in that scope.

So what you need to do is reach up to the parent scope, and use that $index.

See http://plnkr.co/edit/FvVhirpoOF8TYnIVygE6?p=preview

<li class="tutorial_title {{tutorial.active}}" ng-click="loadFromMenu($parent.$index)" ng-repeat="tutorial in section.tutorials">
    {{tutorial.name}}
</li>