Drag and Drop table content with JavaScript

1,195 thoughts on “Drag and Drop table content with JavaScript”

1. @Kjell Wahlberg – Scrollable DIV containers should work. Please see Example 6: Scrollable and fixed containers. If you scroll right table to the right, DIV elements from middle table should be able to drag. The similar case will work if one table is above the other table. Table should be closed within DIV container with set style position:relative.
   Hope this tip will help you.

2. Hi Darko,

   I’ve poured through the documentation before bothering you with these questions but I haven’t figured it out. The smaller question is how come I’m not getting the “dropped” event triggered ever? I have a test page on which I have set up handlers for all the different events and display them in a message area on the page (this is, of course, just for my learning purposes). I get all kind of events: moved, cloned dropped, dropped before, clicked, changed, etc. But no “dropped”.

   The bigger question (and that may make the first question moot) is this. I have two columns (that are represented by two tables) and I can drag from the left column to the right column (so far so good) and I can trap “cloned dropped” to determine if it’s a valid move. However, when I move things from one cell to the other WITHIN the target/right side I can’t trap any event that is useful to determine if it’s a valid drop. Hence the first question about the dropped event.

   So why am I not trapping “dropped” and is there a better way to do this anyway?

   Thanks!

   Ron

3. I didn’t mean for you to guess why I don’t get the event dropped. I can send example. I was just wondering if this something you’ve seen before and might know right off what I did wrong.

   Thanks aagain,

   Ron

4. I may have figured it out. Sorry for the messages.

5. @Ron – No problem, I will just add a comment. myhandler_dropped is invoked after DIV element is dropped to the table cell. In source code redips-drag.js version 4.6.14 see line 1175. Right after this event handler is called, REDIPS.drag lib calls myhandler_cloned_dropped event handler. So, maybe displayed message from cloned_dropped overwrites message from dropped event handler (because in case of dropping cloned DIV element, both event handlers will be called).

6. Hi,
   really wonderful plugin!!!
   Unlucky i’ve a problem with using this plugin with a table with more than 20 columns with width set to 150 or more px….
   After the 4th or 5th column drag and drop not works anymore…
   can you help me please?

   thanks in advice!!
   Alex

7. Great library!

   I have a few questions.

   1. Is it possible to control the ordering of elements, when dropping multiple div’s in a single cell ?
   It seems they allways go to the bottom of the cell, no matter where they are dropped, and it is pretty hard to rearrange them inside the cell (for the same reason).

   2. Is it possible to change the orientation, when dropping multiple div’s in a single cell ?
   It could be nice being able to “stack” them horizontially instead of vertically.

   See: http://bitwerk.dk/redips

   Regards
   Brian

8. Hi Darko,

   i’ve found the problem in this ccs class:

   /* drag container (contains two tables) */
   #drag {
       margin: auto;
       width: 730px;
   }
   

   if i set width: auto, the problem seems partially resolved, but persist with a table with scrollbars.
   Set with:10000px autoscroll not works properly;

   Thanks in Advice
   Alex

9. Hi Darko,

   I have a question for you related to your wonderfull script :) :
   When dragging an item from one cell to another. Do you know if it is possible to recognize the source cell and the target cell? I can see the event ‘myhandler_dropped’, but i don’t think that will return those values.

   Trying to save separate items via AJAX :) . Is that even doable? Or is it only possible to save the schedule as one large chunk in the database?

   thanks in advance! (you must be busy with all these questions :) )
   Ruben

10. @Alex – Try to make drag container visible by adding border style:

    #drag {
        margin: auto;
        width: 730px;
        border: 1px solid lime;
    }
    

    After drag container is visible, set width to wrap tables properly. On the other hand, please try to set drag container on the following way:

    #drag {
        display: table;
        margin: auto;
        border: 1px solid lime;
    }
    

    If display style is set to table then drag container will be extended to include all content inside.

    @Brian Pedersen – Element order inside one table cell can be controlled but with additional JS code. My advice would be to use a table with several TD elements and to sort DIV elements by setting REDIPS.drag libt to shift mode. Please see example09 Single and shift mode. Table can have one TR element with many TD elements so it’s irrelevant will it be vertically or horizontally. So, please try to avoid dropping DIV elements to one table cell if you need to control order of DIV elements.

    @Ruben – Inside myhandler_dropped event handler it’s possible to find out source and target table cells:

    REDIPS.drag.myhandler_dropped = function (target_cell) {
        // define source table cell
        var source_cell = REDIPS.drag.source_cell;
        ...
        ...
    

    Target cell reference is sent during event handler call, while source cell is defined from public property. Hope this info will be useful for developing AJAX save. And you can try with REDIPS.drag.get_position() method like is used in example03/ajax/script.js script.

    Answering the questions is sometimes fun. It’s helpful for me to see how REDIPS.drag can be improved or is documentation good enough – thanks! ;)

11. Hi Darko,

    thanks for the help but unfortunatly didn’t work, the autoscroll problem after first scroll persist.

    I’ve build and example of the issue at : http://www.fantacompa.altervista.org/DragTest/index.html

    In this test i’ve apply your proposed solution, but without result :(

    Really thanks for you amazin plugin and your help!!

    Thanks in Advice!
    Alex

12. @Alex – Please try to remove:

    rd.autoscroll = false;
    

    line from myhandler_dropped_before event handler in CrossTbl.js file. It seems that you turned off autoscroll feature on first DIV element drop – but it’s unwanted action. ;)

13. Hi Darko,
    i’ve found the problem!

    I’ve wrongly put in the drop_before event the command to disable the autoscroll.
    Sorry about the time that I made you lose.

    Alex

14. Once again, great script!

    Couple questions.

    I have a 5×6 table that gets loaded with images that represent various objects. We let our users move the images around the table via your script. We also have the images inside href tags so when they are clicked on they get taken to an edit screen where various descriptive fields can be used to describe the image. In some cases (may be dependent on the browser) we are getting the edit screen come up after dropping the image either in a new location or if we start to drag and then drop back in its original location. What would be the best approach to identify a drag operation that would disable the click operation. Ideally we would like the click to only be recognized if no drag event preceded it.

    Second, on a delete event, if I don’t want the included javascript alert box but instead my own, styled to match our site, type of confirmation window to pop up, do I have to edit your script to make that happen or are there any configurable items around the delete confirmation dialog?

    Thanks!

15. @Scott – The problem is that both objects (inner image and outer DIV element) have registered onclick event listener. Event order can be capturing, bubbling or both – means that clicking on DIV element can be caught by listener attached to the image. So, hope the next trick will solve this problem. When user clicks on DIV element, drop_flag will be set to false. If DIV element will be moved, that drop_flag will be set to true. This flag (declared as global variable) should be used in your code executed on image click.

    redips_init = function () {
    	// reference to the REDIPS.drag lib
    	var rd = REDIPS.drag;
    	// initialization
    	rd.init();
    	// after DIV element is clicked, reset flag variable
    	rd.myhandler_clicked = function () {
    		drag_flag = false;
    	};
    	// after DIV element is moved then set flag variable
    	rd.myhandler_moved = function () {
    		drag_flag = true;
    	};
    };
    

    And later in function executed after user clicks on image:

    if (!drag_flag) {
    	...
    	...
    	...
    }
    

    And regarding delete confirmation. REDIPS.drag curenttly doesn’t have option to define custom dialog box. You can open redips-drag.js source file and search for “confirm(” string – it should be at line 1066. After modification is tested, just minimize source code to speed up page loading.

16. Great package. One comment, it would be nice if you had a copy function that would allow a target to be copied to with the option to replace any contents. This would be like the move function, except don’t move the object, clone it, then move the cloned object. With the replace option, if the target div already has contents in it, first delete that object, then move the cloned object.

    Thanks.

17. Hi Darko,

    I developed a drag and drop simple app and now I’m trying to incorporate it into a large app that I had already built using drop downs instead of your library.

    When I try to change the old app to use the drag and drop (clone), when I try to drag something it appears just outside my table until I drop it somewhere (without seeing it dragged) then it disappears from just outside my table and appears in the right place. So I don’t get the cool drag look.

    Is this something you recognize off-hand? If so, what did I do wrong?

    Thanks,

    Ron

18. Just to clarify:

    When I go to drag it gets cloned, as it should, but it shows it outside the table. If I then drag the cursor (without anything under it) to the target cell it will appear in the target cell as it should. I just don’t know why it gets cloned outside the table.

19. I figured it out but it leads to another question. Somehow my line:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    

    got deleted and I have been developing without it, This is just a demo.

    Is there any way I can add something else that won’t make the clones go outside the table and won’t mess up my current layout?

    I know it’s bad development to develop without this line but I’ve done a lot without knowing.

    Thanks,

    Ron

20. I had a problem when moving things to trash. I had a table with 3 rows and 4 items per row in the total of 10 items (not 12). So the last item was 2,2. Not 2,3. find_cell() was returning an undefined item in the column index. So I changed the following to solve this. I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do but did the trick for me.

    … from :

    case 'last':
        ri = tbl.rows.length - 1;
        ci = tbl.rows[0].cells.length - 1;
        break;
    

    … to :

    case 'last':
        ri = tbl.rows.length - 1;
        ci = tbl.rows[ri].cells.length - 1; //get number of items from last row
        break;
    

    Best wishes,
    Bruno