Add active class to current subcategory - php

Question

With the code blow I retrieve the current parent category and his children. Is it possible to add an active class for the current child?
<?php
$currentCat = Mage::registry('current_category');
if ( $currentCat->getParentId() == Mage::app()->getStore()->getRootCategoryId() )
{
$loadCategory = $currentCat;
}
else
{
$loadCategory = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($currentCat->getParentId());
}
$subCategories = explode(',', $loadCategory->getChildren());
foreach ( $subCategories as $subCategoryId )
{
$cat = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($subCategoryId);
if($cat->getIsActive())
{
echo '<li>'.$cat->getName().'</li>';
}
}
?>

Answer 1

You already have the current category, so you can check it's ID against the IDs of the categories being looped through.
Where you have
echo '<li>'.$cat->getName().'</li>';
Change it to do the check for the ID and then add the "active" class when found
$class = '';
if ($currentCat->getId() == $cat->getId())
{
$class = ' class="active"';
}
echo '<li'.$class.'>'.$cat->getName().'</li>';

Answer 2

To set the category as active we have to set the current category in catalog layer.
$_categoryName=YourCategoryName;
$_category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->loadByAttribute('name', $_categoryName);
Mage::getSingleton('catalog/layer')->setCurrentCategory($_category);
This looks better than ugly hack of changing in phtml filter..