Question

I have 3 sortable UL’s and a simple jquery/javascript

<ul class="sortable" id="menu1">
  <li id="id_1">whatever</li>
  <li id="id_2">you</li>
</ul>
<ul class="sortable" id="menu2">
  <li id="id_3">wanne</li>
  <li id="id_4">put</li>
</ul>
<ul class="sortable" id="menu3">
  <li id="id_5">in</li>
  <li id="id_6">here</li>
</ul>

$(function() {
    $("ul.sortable").sortable({
        connectWith: 'ul'
        });
    });
</script>

LI’s are draggable between UL’s
How can i serialize this so i get for example menu1[0]=1&menu1[1]=3
Or and array or whatever i can work with to save the state?

Answer 1

UPDATED

DEMO: http://jsbin.com/evoru4/2

In your case use this:

$(function() {
    $("ul.sortable").sortable({
        connectWith: '.sortable',
        update: function(event, ui) {
        var position = $('.sortable').serial();
        alert( position );
        }
    });
});

// this function make your UL LI a serialized object

(function($) {
    $.fn.serial = function() {
        var array = [];
        var $elem = $(this);
        $elem.each(function(i) {
            var menu = this.id;
            $('li', this).each(function(e) {
                array.push(menu + '[' + e + ']=' + this.id);
            });
        });
        return array.join('&');
    }
})(jQuery);

that give you something like this:

menu1[0]=id_1&menu1[1]=id_2&menu2[0]=id_4&menu2[1]=id_6&menu3[0]=id_5&menu3[1]=id_3

that is representing the position order of each element