[angularjs] How to highlight a current menu item?

If you want the links for the directive in a wrapper rather than selecting each individual link (makes it easier to look at the scope in Batarang), this works pretty well too:

  angular.module("app").directive("navigation", [
    "$location", function($location) {
      return {
        restrict: 'A',
        scope: {},
        link: function(scope, element) {
          var classSelected, navLinks;

          scope.location = $location;

          classSelected = 'selected';

          navLinks = element.find('a');

          scope.$watch('location.path()', function(newPath) {
            var el;
            el = navLinks.filter('[href="' + newPath + '"]');

            navLinks.not(el).closest('li').removeClass(classSelected);
            return el.closest('li').addClass(classSelected);
          });
        }
      };
    }
  ]);

Markup would just be:

    <nav role="navigation" data-navigation>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="/messages">Messages</a></li>
            <li><a href="/help">Help</a></li>
            <li><a href="/details">Details</a></li>
        </ul>
    </nav>

I should also mention that I am using 'full-fat' jQuery in this example, but you can easily alter what I have done with the filtering and so on.