Question

Say I have this html:

<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Sort Order</th>
    <th>Name</th>
  </tr>

  <tr class="item" id="item_1">
    <td class="sortorder">1</td>
    <td>ABC</td>
  </tr>

  <tr class="item" id="item_2">
    <td class="sortorder">2</td>
    <td>DEF</td>
  </tr>

  <tr class="item" id="item_3">
    <td class="sortorder">3</td>
    <td>XYZ</td>
  </tr>
</table>

What I want is for a user to be able to sort the rows in the table (excluding the first row with the <th>s, so all rows with the class .item) by dragging and dropping them, and then update their sort orders.

E.g if user drags DEF to first position and ABC replaces it, I want DEF’s sort order to say 1, and ABC’s to say 2 instead.

How can this be done?

If needed, I can have all the items stored seperately in a javascript array or object so I can loop over them and update each item’s sort order whenever the user changes the sort order.

Answer 1

You can use jQuery UI’s sortable list. Its well supported across browsers and has many options and callbacks. They use a list in their example but you could just as easily use a table.

jQuery UI Sortable Documentation – http://jqueryui.com/demos/sortable/
Sortable tutorial/guide – http://www.petefreitag.com/item/736.cfm

Example:

$('table').sortable({
    items : '.item',
    update : function(event, ui)
    {
        alert('sort order updated');

        // Display sort order - also checkout serialize() method in jQuery UI Docs
        alert('sort order: ' + $(this).sortable('toArray').toString());
    }
});