How to set Bootstrap navbar "active" class in Angular 2?

Bert Deterd's answer is correct, but there's one thing that can be added.

If one route is a substring of another route, you will see something like this happen: 2 active anchors

You can add this to make it match exact routes only:

[routerLinkActiveOptions]="{exact:true}"

Full Example:

<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
  <li [routerLinkActive]="['active']" [routerLinkActiveOptions]="{exact:true}">
    <a [routerLink]="['/']">Home</a>
  </li>
  <li [routerLinkActive]="['active']" [routerLinkActiveOptions]="{exact:true}">
    <a [routerLink]="['/about']">About</a>
  </li>
  <li [routerLinkActive]="['active']" [routerLinkActiveOptions]="{exact:true}">
    <a [routerLink]="['/calendar']">Calendar</a>
  </li>
</ul>

If you use the new 3.0.0. component router ( https://github.com/angular/vladivostok ) you can use the routerLinkActive directive. No further javascript required.

<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
  <li [routerLinkActive]="['active']"> <a [routerLink]="['one']">One</a></li>
  <li [routerLinkActive]="['active']"> <a [routerLink]="['second']">Second</a></li>
</ul>

I used "@angular/router": "^3.0.0-alpha.7"