Rails spinoffs - Jul 2005 - save order from drag and drop

only just found the script.aculo.us site. brilliant. much respect.
 
wondered if anyone can point me in the right direction on this drag and drop
list re-ordering type thing, i''ve read through what I can but to be
honest
it''s gone right over my head! How do I get the new order that has been
established via dragging list elements around and store them in a database.
I figured an update link of some sort that grabs the order of the <li> id
names and their new positions?
 
or am i barking up the wrong HTML elements ?

On Jul 12, 2005, at 12:39 PM, David Kerley wrote:
> only just found the script.aculo.us site. brilliant. much respect.
>
Here, here. Much respect.
>
> wondered if anyone can point me in the right direction on this drag  
> and drop
> list re-ordering type thing, i''ve read through what I can but to
be
> honest
> it''s gone right over my head!
>
David, check this answer(s) to your question, basically, from the  
main Rails list:
> My quick and dirty solution is to
>
>     @thing_ids = params[:things]
>     @thing_ids.each do |thing_id|
>       Thing.find(thing_id).move_to_bottom
>     end
>
> But that''s rather inefficient, and quite slow when you''re
ordering
> large lists.
>
>
class Thing < ActiveRecord::Base
   def self.reorder( things )
     things.each do |thing_id|
       thing = find thing_id
       thing.send "#{position_column}=".to_sym, things.index( thing_id
)
       thing.save
     end
   end
end

The last one comes with a caveat that it hasn''t been tested. The  
first (quick and dirty) one I implemented yesterday and it worked  
fine. I did a bit of work to integrate it with the examples on the  
scriptaculous site... basically what it does is go thru and push  
everything to the "end" of the list, which is inefficient, but I  
can''t think of a better way...

I plan on moving to the second implementation this week because it  
moves the responsibility to the model, rather than the controller,  
where it belongs. Or so I''m told. :)

Hope it works for you!

-raymond

On Jul 12, 2005, at 3:12 PM, Raymond Brigleb wrote:
> class Thing < ActiveRecord::Base
>   def self.reorder( things )
>     things.each do |thing_id|
>       thing = find thing_id
>       thing.send "#{position_column}=".to_sym, things.index(
thing_id )
>       thing.save
# probably safer to use save!