How to Keep Active Pagination with jQuery and Local Storage

Learn how to maintain the active pagination state after a page reload using jQuery and local storage. A practical solution to improve user experience.
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Introduction

If you've been working with pagination in your web projects, you may have encountered an issue where the active pagination link doesn’t persist after the page reloads. This can be frustrating for users who expect to see the current page highlighted even after they've navigated away and returned. In this guide, we’ll explore how to tackle this problem effectively using jQuery along with the browser's local storage feature.

The Problem

Imagine you have a pagination component in your Bootstrap-based application. When the user clicks on a page number, the background should change to indicate which page is currently active. However, upon reloading the page, that active state disappears, leaving users unsure of their location in the pagination.

Here's a summary of the key requirements and specifications:

The active pagination link should have a distinct background color (like red).

The active state must persist even after a page reload.

Only the currently active page should be highlighted, not all visited links.

Solution Overview

To retain the active state upon reloading the page, we’ll make use of localStorage—a web storage solution that allows us to save data in the user's browser. Here’s how we'll break down the solution:

Setup HTML for Pagination

Add CSS for Active State

Implement jQuery for Click Events and Local Storage Handling

1. Setup HTML for Pagination

Start with a simple HTML structure for your pagination links, as follows:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

2. Add CSS for Active State

Use the following CSS to give the active page a distinct red background:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

3. Implement jQuery for Click Events and Local Storage Handling

Now, we’ll write the jQuery code that will manage the click events and handle the local storage functionality to retain the active pagination link:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

How It Works

On Document Ready: We retrieve the active page from local storage and check if it exists. If it does, we loop through all pagination links and apply the active class to the link that matches the stored value.

On Click Event: When a pagination link is clicked, we remove the active class from all links, add it to the clicked link, and update local storage with the text of that link.

Conclusion

With this solution, you can effectively maintain the active state of your pagination links, providing a better user experience. Users will always know which page they are on, even after reloading the page. Remember to always test your implementation in various browsers to ensure compatibility.

This approach not only solves the immediate problem but also showcases the power of jQuery combined with local storage to create dynamic, user-friendly interfaces.