Find Active Tab using jQuery and Twitter Bootstrap

Twitter Bootstrap assigns the active class to the li element that represents the active tab:

$("ul#sampleTabs li.active")

An alternative is to bind the shown event of each tab, and save the active tab:

var activeTab = null;
$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown', function (e) {
  activeTab = e.target;
})

Here is the answer for those of you who need a Boostrap 3 solution.

In bootstrap 3 use 'shown.bs.tab' instead of 'shown' in the next line

// tab
$('#rowTab a:first').tab('show');

$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
//show selected tab / active
 console.log ( $(e.target).attr('id') );
});