jQuery Sortable - Select and Drag Multiple List Items

Question

I have a design where I have a list of "available boxes", users take boxes by dragging them from the "available boxes" list to their "My Boxes" list.

Users more often than not take multiple boxes at a time (max 20), once they have finished with the boxes they drag them back to the "available boxes" list to return them.

jQuery sortable allows me to drag one box at a time which from a user perspective is undesirable. I've been unable to come up with a simple solution to the issue.

I may have to come up with a different UI method entirely, but first does anyone have any suggestions on how this might be accomplished?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't have this working using sortable, but I did using draggable & droppable. I don't know if I covered all the functionality you need, but it should be a good start (demo here):

HTML

<div class="demo">
    <p>Available Boxes (click to select multiple boxes)</p>    
    <ul id="draggable">
        <li>Box #1</li>
        <li>Box #2</li>
        <li>Box #3</li>
        <li>Box #4</li>
    </ul>

    <p>My Boxes</p>
    <ul id="droppable">
    </ul>

</div>

Script

$(document).ready(function(){

    var selectedClass = 'ui-state-highlight',
        clickDelay = 600,     // click time (milliseconds)
        lastClick, diffClick; // timestamps

    $("#draggable li")
        // Script to deferentiate a click from a mousedown for drag event
        .bind('mousedown mouseup', function(e){
            if (e.type=="mousedown") {
                lastClick = e.timeStamp; // get mousedown time
            } else {
                diffClick = e.timeStamp - lastClick;
                if ( diffClick < clickDelay ) {
                    // add selected class to group draggable objects
                    $(this).toggleClass(selectedClass);
                }
            }
        })
        .draggable({
            revertDuration: 10, // grouped items animate separately, so leave this number low
            containment: '.demo',
            start: function(e, ui) {
                ui.helper.addClass(selectedClass);
            },
            stop: function(e, ui) {
                // reset group positions
                $('.' + selectedClass).css({ top:0, left:0 });
            },
            drag: function(e, ui) {
                // set selected group position to main dragged object
                // this works because the position is relative to the starting position
                $('.' + selectedClass).css({
                    top : ui.position.top,
                    left: ui.position.left
                });
            }
        });

    $("#droppable, #draggable")
        .sortable()
        .droppable({
            drop: function(e, ui) {
                $('.' + selectedClass)
                 .appendTo($(this))
                 .add(ui.draggable) // ui.draggable is appended by the script, so add it after
                 .removeClass(selectedClass)
                 .css({ top:0, left:0 });
            }
        });

});