Question

I have a table that has sortable rows. The table is generated from a mysql database that has a field called “displayorder” that oders the table. When the user drags and drops rows, I want to use AJAX to submit those changes to the database whenever a user drops a row.

Currently, I can see the console.log() output from the success part of the AJAX call, and when i output the data there (order) it looks great, like this:
["order_1=1", "order_2=2", "order_4=3", "order_3=4"]

But according to Firebug, all that’s getting passed in the $_POST is “undeclared”.
How do I access that order variable from my indexpage_order.php file?

I have this jquery code:

    <script>
    $(document).ready(function() {
        var fixHelper = function(e, tr) {
            var $originals = tr.children();
            var $helper = tr.clone();
            $helper.children().each(function(index)
            {
              $(this).width($originals.eq(index).width())
            });
            return $helper;
        };
        var sortable = $("#sort tbody").sortable({
        helper: fixHelper,
        stop: function(event, ui) {
            //create an array with the new order
            order = $(this).find('input').map(function(index, obj) {
                var input = $(obj);
                input.val(index + 1);
                return input.attr('id') + '=' + (index + 1);
            });
            $.ajax({
                    type: 'POST',
                    url: 'indexpage_order.php',
                    data: order,
                error: function() {
                    console.log("Theres an error with AJAX");
                },
                success: function(order) {
                    console.log("Saved.");
                    console.log(order);
                }
            });
            return false;
        }
        });
    });
    </script>

indexpage_order.php contains:

if(isset($_POST) ) {

    while ( list($key, $value) = each($_POST) ) {
        $id = trim($key,'order_'); //trim off order_
        $sqlCommand = 
            "UPDATE indexpage 
             SET displayorder = '".$value."' 
             WHERE id = '".$id."'";
        $query = mysqli_query($myConnection,$sqlCommand) or die (mysqli_error($myConnection));
        $row = mysqli_fetch_array($query);
    }
}

Answer 1

You can simply rewrite the js code that are generating the data for POST.

order = {}
$(this).find('input').map(function(index, obj)
  { 
    return order[this.id] = index;
  }
)

Rest should work in PHP.