Content of HTML table cells can be dragged to another cell or another table. It isn’t difficult to define onMouseMove handler and change top / left element styles to move the object. In case with tables, you will have to determine somehow target cell. Attaching onMouseOver handler on TD elements will not work, because browser doesn’t fire events to the elements below the dragged object.

Anyway, after taking care of the current scroll position and calculating TD positions, REDIPS.drag should work in recent major browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera and mobile devices as well. Click on image below, will open live demo where you can drag green, blue or orange bordered DIV elements, change properties (radio button and check-boxes) and click on “Save” button.

Download latest version redips2.tar.gz



REDIPS.drag example01 In this example “Save” button will scan table content, create query string and send to PHP page. Demo shows how to collect content and accept parameters on the server side. More about accepting parameters you can read at Reading multiple parameters in PHP. “Clone” elements (orange in this demo) will be duplicated first because of “redips-clone” keyword contained in class name. If you drop object on cell named “Trash”, object will be deleted from the table (with or without confirmation). Library has built in autoscroll and option to forbid landing to non empty cells or cells named with class “redips-mark”. Table can contain rowspan / colspan TDs and different background color for every cell. Here are minimal steps to enable content dragging in table:

put <script type=”text/javascript” src=”redips-drag-min.js”></script> to the head section

to the head section initialize REDIPS.drag library: <body onload=”REDIPS.drag.init()”>

place table(s) inside <div id=”redips-drag”> to enable content dragging

to enable content dragging place <div class=”redips-drag”>Hello World</div> to the table cell

Other features of REDIPS.drag library:

methods and data structure are defined in namespace (easier integration with other JS frameworks)

all JavaScript code is checked with ESLint

REDIPS.drag documentation generated with JsDoc Toolkit

drag and drop table rows

movable DIV element can contain other HTML code (images, forms, tables …)

forbidding or allowing TDs marked with class name “redips-mark”

option to define exceptions and allow dropping certain DIV elements to the marked cell

option to define single content cell on the table declared with “multiple” drop option

cloning for unlimited cloning add “redips-clone” class name to the DIV object

<div class=”redips-drag redips-clone”>Hello World</div> to limit cloning and transform last object to the ordinary movable object add ‘climit1_X’ class name

<div class=”redips-drag redips-clone climit1_4″>Hello World</div> to limit cloning and transform last object to immovable object add ‘climit2_X’ class name

<div class=”redips-drag redips-clone climit2_4″>Hello World</div> where X is integer and defines number of cloned elements (in previous examples, each climit will allow only 4 cloned elements)

unlimited nested tables support

dropping objects only to empty cells

switch cell content

switching cell content continuously

overwrite TD content with dropped element

shift table content

table cell with “redips-trash” class name becomes trashcan

enabled handlers to place custom code on events: changed, clicked, cloned, clonedDropped, clonedEnd1, clonedEnd2, dblClicked, deleted, dropped, droppedBefore, finish, moved, notCloned, notMoved, shiftOverflow, relocateBefore, relocateAfter, relocateEnd, rowChanged, rowClicked, rowCloned, rowDeleted, rowDropped, rowDroppedBefore, rowDroppedSource, rowMoved, rowNotCloned, rowNotMoved, rowUndeleted, switched and undeleted

deleting cloned DIV if the cloned DIV is dragged outside of any table

enabling / disabling dragging

animation (move element/row to the destination cell/row)

added support for touch devices (touchstart, touchmove, touchend)

How REDIPS.drag works?

Script will search for DIV elements (with class name “redips-drag”) inside tables closed in <div id=”redips-drag”> and attach onMouseDown event handler. When user clicks with left mouse button on DIV element, onMouseMove and onMouseUp handlers will be attached to the document level.

While dragging DIV element, script changes its “left” and “top” styles. This is function of the onMouseMove handler. When user releases left mouse button, onMouseUp event handler will unlink onMouseMove and onMouseUp event handlers. This way, browser will listen and process mousemove events only when DIV element is dragged.

As I mentioned, onMouseDown is defined on the elements you want to drag. Elements beneath the dragged object will not be able to catch onMouseOver event. Why? Because you are dragging object and that object only can catch the onMouseOver event.

So, to detect destination table cells, script calculates all cell coordinates (with scroll page offset) and store them to the array. Array is searched inside onMouseMove handler and after left mouse button is released, DIV will drop to the current (highlighted) table cell.

In redips2.tar.gz package you will find many examples including example of how to save/recall table using PHP and MySQL. Package also contains and redips-drag-min.js – a compressed version of REDIPS.drag library (compressed with Google Closure Compiler).

Happy dragging and dropping!