Question

Is there any fix to make Jquery-ui sortable work on touch devices based on Android or IOS?

Answer 1

The other answer is great but unfortunately it will only work on iOS devices.

Also there was is a breakage caused by later versions of jquery.ui that meant that _touchEnd events were not correctly resetting an internal flag (mouseHandled) in mouse.ui and this was causing exceptions.

Both of these problems should now be fixed with this code.

/*
 * Content-Type:text/javascript
 *
 * A bridge between iPad and iPhone touch events and jquery draggable, 
 * sortable etc. mouse interactions.
 * @author Oleg Slobodskoi  
 * 
 * modified by John Hardy to use with any touch device
 * fixed breakage caused by jquery.ui so that mouseHandled internal flag is reset 
 * before each touchStart event
 * 
 */
(function( $ ) {

    $.support.touch = typeof Touch === 'object';

    if (!$.support.touch) {
        return;
    }

    var proto =  $.ui.mouse.prototype,
    _mouseInit = proto._mouseInit;

    $.extend( proto, {
        _mouseInit: function() {
            this.element
            .bind( "touchstart." + this.widgetName, $.proxy( this, "_touchStart" ) );
            _mouseInit.apply( this, arguments );
        },

        _touchStart: function( event ) {
            if ( event.originalEvent.targetTouches.length != 1 ) {
                return false;
            }

            this.element
            .bind( "touchmove." + this.widgetName, $.proxy( this, "_touchMove" ) )
            .bind( "touchend." + this.widgetName, $.proxy( this, "_touchEnd" ) );

            this._modifyEvent( event );

            $( document ).trigger($.Event("mouseup")); //reset mouseHandled flag in ui.mouse
            this._mouseDown( event );

            return false;           
        },

        _touchMove: function( event ) {
            this._modifyEvent( event );
            this._mouseMove( event );   
        },

        _touchEnd: function( event ) {
            this.element
            .unbind( "touchmove." + this.widgetName )
            .unbind( "touchend." + this.widgetName );
            this._mouseUp( event ); 
        },

        _modifyEvent: function( event ) {
            event.which = 1;
            var target = event.originalEvent.targetTouches[0];
            event.pageX = target.clientX;
            event.pageY = target.clientY;
        }

    });

})( jQuery );