Mark active menu LI

Normally it's useful to have the active menu item marked, eg. by class="active". With this module it is only the case for the menu link itself. In order to style the surrounding box ( li ) it would be usefull to have it marked as well.
Find below my solution trough overriding of the theme function:

function pdda_nice_menu_build($menu) {
  $output = '';  

  foreach ($menu as $menu_item) {
    $mlid = $menu_item['link']['mlid'];
    if ($menu_item['link']['hidden'] == 0) {
      $clean_path = str_replace(array('http://', '<', '>', '&', '=', '?', ':'), '', $menu_item['link']['href']);
      $clean_path = str_replace('/', '-', $clean_path);
      $path_class = 'menu-path-'. $clean_path;
// ******* included check if active item ******* 
      $active_class = ($menu_item['link']['href'] == $_GET['q'] || ($menu_item['link']['href'] == '<front>' && drupal_is_front_page())) ? ' active ' : '';

      if ((!empty($menu_item['link']['has_children'])) && (!empty($menu_item['below']))) {

        $children = theme('nice_menu_build', $menu_item['below']);

        $parent_class = $children ? 'menuparent ' : '';
// ******* included $active_class here: ******* 
        $output .= '<li id="menu-'. $mlid .'" class="'. $parent_class . $path_class . $active_class .'">'. theme('menu_item_link', $menu_item['link']);       

        if ($children) {
          $output .= '<ul>';
          $output .= $children;                     
          $output .= "</ul>\n";
        }
        $output .= "</li>\n";
      }
      else {
// ******* included $active_class here: ******* 
        $output .= '<li id="menu-'. $mlid .'" class="'. $path_class . $active_class .'">'. theme('menu_item_link', $menu_item['link']) .'</li>'."\n";
      }
    }
  }
  return $output;
}