How to set bootstrap navbar active class with Angular JS?

A very elegant way is to use ng-controller to run a single controller outside of the ng-view:

<div class="collapse navbar-collapse" ng-controller="HeaderController">
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav">
        <li ng-class="{ active: isActive('/')}"><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li ng-class="{ active: isActive('/dogs')}"><a href="/dogs">Dogs</a></li>
        <li ng-class="{ active: isActive('/cats')}"><a href="/cats">Cats</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>
<div ng-view></div>

and include in controllers.js:

function HeaderController($scope, $location) 
{ 
    $scope.isActive = function (viewLocation) { 
        return viewLocation === $location.path();
    };
}

I just wrote a directive to handle this, so you can simply add the attribute bs-active-link to the parent <ul> element, and any time the route changed, it will find the matching link, and add the active class to the corresponding <li>.

You can see it in action here: http://jsfiddle.net/8mcedv3b/

Example HTML:

<ul class="nav navbar-nav" bs-active-link>
  <li><a href="/home">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
</ul>

Javascript:

angular.module('appName')
.directive('bsActiveLink', ['$location', function ($location) {
return {
    restrict: 'A', //use as attribute 
    replace: false,
    link: function (scope, elem) {
        //after the route has changed
        scope.$on("$routeChangeSuccess", function () {
            var hrefs = ['/#' + $location.path(),
                         '#' + $location.path(), //html5: false
                         $location.path()]; //html5: true
            angular.forEach(elem.find('a'), function (a) {
                a = angular.element(a);
                if (-1 !== hrefs.indexOf(a.attr('href'))) {
                    a.parent().addClass('active');
                } else {
                    a.parent().removeClass('active');   
                };
            });     
        });
    }
}
}]);