I know this is quite old, but after wasting hours of my life, I came up with a super dirty hack, that does the trick (assuming I understood your question correctly and you have the same issue as me).
Problem Statement
Using UI Bootstrap Tabs, dynamically adding tabs based on list data and maintaining the active state outside of this data.
When using the Tabs of UI Bootstrap and generating tabs like this:
<tab ng-repeat="item in page.data.list" active="item.active">
UI Bootstrap will use the binding of the item to store the active state. If we omit the active attribute, UI Bootstrap will maintain it internally but then it becomes impossible to manipulate the active state from the outside, except for accessing it via one of these: $$ (which are the untouchables!)
Solution (The Hack)
Maintain the active state in another list:
<div ng-controller="parasample-tabs">
{{activeState}}
<tabset ng-show="page.data.list.length">
<tab ng-repeat="item in page.data.list" active="activeState[$index]">
<tab-heading>
<i style="cursor: pointer" class="glyphicon glyphicon-remove" ng-click="delTab($index)" prevent-default></i>
Item {{$index +1}}
</tab-heading>
{{item.text}} - {{item.transcript}} - {{item.active}}
</tab>
</tabset>
<!--
For me this problem arose because I like to use self-contained, self-managing data
from factories, hence I call addItem not on a controller
-->
<button ng-click="page.addItem()">Add Item</button>
</div>
Now for the controller, that is wrapped around that tabs and manages them, and their active state instead of writing it into my data:
app.controller('parasample-tabs', function ($scope) {
$scope.maxItems = 5;
$scope.activeState = [];
$scope.delTab = function (idx) {
var list = $scope.page.data.list;
if (list.length > 0) {
$scope.page.delItem(idx);
$scope.activeState.splice(idx, 1);
}
};
$scope.$watch(
"page.data.list.length",
function (newLen, oldLen) {
if (!newLen) return;
// new item => new tab, make active
if (newLen > oldLen)
$scope.activeState.push("true");
}
);
});
Now UI Bootstrap will access the array activeState and store the active state there. There is no need for initialisation, as that is taken care of.
When a new item is added to our data list, the watch will set the new tab as the active tab (thats my preference) and the rest of the list will be updated by UI Bootstrap.
When deleting however, it is not easily possible to determine which item was removed, so I had to wrap my page.delItem into the controller's delTab method.
Here is a fiddle to play with, too.
Let's hope that UI Bootstrap will allow for a different way to maintain the active state instead of having a two way binding in the active attribute. I like having an "active ID" variable.
Disclaimer: I am aware of how dirty this is and I only tested it in Chrome so far and it works nicely.