Bootstrap 3 jquery event for active tab change

I spent an unrealistic amount of time trying to fire a function when the tab changes of the bootstrap 3 tab/navbar and literally all suggestions google spat out were wrong/did not work.

How to go about this?

Meta-edit: see comment

$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
  var target = $(e.target).attr("href") // activated tab
  alert(target);
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.6/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
<link href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet"/>

<ul id="myTab" class="nav nav-tabs">
  <li class="active"><a href="#home" data-toggle="tab">Home</a></li>
  <li class=""><a href="#profile" data-toggle="tab">Profile</a></li>
</ul>
<div id="myTabContent" class="tab-content">
  <div class="tab-pane fade active in" id="home">
    home tab!
  </div>
  <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile">
    profile tab!
  </div>
</div>

$(function () {
    $('#myTab a:last').tab('show');
});
 
$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown.bs.tab', function (e) {
    var target = $(e.target).attr("href");
    if ((target == '#messages')) {
        alert('ok');
    } else {
        alert('not ok');
    }
});

the problem is that attr('href') is never empty.

Or to compare the #id = "#some value" and then call the ajax.

Thanks to @Gerben's post came to know there are two events show.bs.tab (before the tab is shown) and shown.bs.tab (after the tab is shown) as explained in the docs - Bootstrap Tab usage

An additional solution if we're only interested in a specific tab, and maybe add separate functions without having to add an if - else block in one function, is to use the a href selector (maybe along with additional selectors if required)

 $("a[href='#tab_target_id']").on('shown.bs.tab', function(e) {
      console.log('shown - after the tab has been shown');
 });

 // or even this one if we want the earlier event
 $("a[href='#tab_target_id']").on('show.bs.tab', function(e) {
      console.log('show - before the new tab has been shown');
 });

demo

To add to Mosh Feu answer, if the tabs where created on the fly like in my case, you would use the following code

$(document).on('shown.bs.tab', 'a[data-toggle="tab"]', function (e) {
    var tab = $(e.target);
    var contentId = tab.attr("href");

    //This check if the tab is active
    if (tab.parent().hasClass('active')) {
         console.log('the tab with the content id ' + contentId + ' is visible');
    } else {
         console.log('the tab with the content id ' + contentId + ' is NOT visible');
    }

});

I hope this helps someone

This worked for me.

$('.nav-pills > li > a').click( function() {
    $('.nav-pills > li.active').removeClass('active');
    $(this).parent().addClass('active');
} );

I use another approach.

Just try to find all a where id starts from some substring.

JS

$('a[id^=v-photos-tab]').click(function () {
     alert("Handler for .click() called.");
});

HTML

<a class="nav-item nav-link active show"  id="v-photos-tab-3a623245-7dc7-4a22-90d0-62705ad0c62b" data-toggle="pill" href="#v-photos-3a623245-7dc7-4a22-90d0-62705ad0c62b" role="tab" aria-controls="v-requestbase-photos" aria-selected="true"><span>Cool photos</span></a>