node.js + jade + express: How can I create a navigation that will set class active if the path matches

Question

I have come up with the following code but the problem is, there will be duplication of the anchor tag for each menu item.Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Here's an alternative that provides more flexibility in terms of anchor text and href than Peter's solution.

nav
  // suppose title local denotes the active nav item
  - var nav = {}; nav[title] = 'active'
  ul
    // pass title to li class via nav object
    li(class='#{nav.Home}')
      // different href and anchor text
      a(href='/') Home
    li(class='#{nav.About}')
      a(href='/about') About
    li(class='#{nav.Contact}')
      a(href='/contact') Contact

The caveat is that those li that are not active will have an undefined class, which does no harm in most cases.