Dashboard navigation with active class

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Hi all,

Im currently building an add-on for our client and I'm a little stuck with something...
We are using bootstrap pills to form our navigation betwen the 6-7 dashboard pages and would like to assign an active class to them.

Ive researched this in the autonav block, and various other means but haven't yet come up with a solution aside from a very basic assigning a variable on a page and checking if it exists.

I have tried using something like this:
<li class="cemenu<?php echo ($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] == '/about' ? ' active' : '');?>"><a href="<?php echo $base_url;?>/about">About</a></li>

and also this....
<li class="cemenu<?php echo ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] == '/about' ? ' active' : '');?>"><a href="<?php echo $base_url;?>/about">About</a></li>

However the problem is the URL wont always be the same...
For instance, the url is also asigned unique ID for each 'bit' your updating...
So i could end up with the following 2 URLs
/shows/setup/udpate/1
/shows/setup/update/2
Where 1 & 2 are the ID's of the show.

Is there a built in navigation solution for the dashboard? Open to both PHP & JavaScript/jQuery solutions...

Many thanks!

jpcharrier