Drag to Reorder

In this example we show how to integrate the Sortable javascript library with htmx.

To begin we initialize the .sortable class with the Sortable javascript library:

htmx.onLoad(function(content) {
    var sortables = content.querySelectorAll(".sortable");
    for (var i = 0; i < sortables.length; i++) {
      var sortable = sortables[i];
      var sortableInstance = new Sortable(sortable, {
          animation: 150,
          ghostClass: 'blue-background-class',

          // Make the `.htmx-indicator` unsortable
          filter: ".htmx-indicator",
          onMove: function (evt) {
            return evt.related.className.indexOf('htmx-indicator') === -1;
          },

          // Disable sorting on the `end` event
          onEnd: function (evt) {
            this.option("disabled", true);
          }
      });

      // Re-enable sorting on the `htmx:afterSwap` event
      sortable.addEventListener("htmx:afterSwap", function() {
        sortableInstance.option("disabled", false);
      });
    }
})

Next, we create a form that has some sortable divs within it, and we trigger an ajax request on the end event, fired by Sortable.js:

<form class="sortable" hx-post="/items" hx-trigger="end">
  <div class="htmx-indicator">Updating...</div>
  <div><input type='hidden' name='item' value='1'/>Item 1</div>
  <div><input type='hidden' name='item' value='2'/>Item 2</div>
  <div><input type='hidden' name='item' value='3'/>Item 3</div>
  <div><input type='hidden' name='item' value='4'/>Item 4</div>
  <div><input type='hidden' name='item' value='5'/>Item 5</div>
</form>

Note that each div has a hidden input inside of it that specifies the item id for that row.

When the list is reordered via the Sortable.js drag-and-drop, the end event will be fired. htmx will then post the item ids in the new order to /items, to be persisted by the server.

That’s it!