RailsSortable is a simple Rails gem that allows you to create a listing view with drag & drop sorting. The arranged order will be persisted in the table without any pain.

Add the following to your Gemfile then run bundle to install them.

gem 'jquery-rails'
gem 'jquery-ui-rails'
gem 'rails_sortable'

And then add the following to the asset pipeline in the application.js:

//= require jquery
//= require jquery_ujs
//= require jquery-ui/widgets/sortable
//= require rails_sortable

RailsSortable requires a specific column on the ActiveRecord Model for its implementation.

For instance, the following migration indicates the case that you are attempting to make Item model sortable.

class CreateItems < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.1]
  def change
    create_table :items do |t|
      t.string :title
      t.integer :sort  # for RailsSortable

      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

and Item model as

class Item < ApplicationRecord
  include RailsSortable::Model
  set_sortable :sort  # Indicate a sort column
  # If you do NOT want timestamps to be updated on sorting, use the following option.
  # set_sortable :sort, without_updating_timestamps: true
end

and ItemsController as

class ItemsController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @items = Item.order(:sort).all
  end
end

and the listing view (typically - index.html.erb) as

...
<table>
  <tbody class="sortable">  <!-- sortable target -->
    <% @items.each_with_sortable_id do |item, sortable_id| %>
      <tr id="<%= sortable_id %>">  <!-- Needs id tag on sorting elements -->
        <td><%= item.title %></td>
        <td><%= item.sort %></td>
        <td><%= link_to 'Show', item %></td>
        <td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_item_path(item) %></td>
        <td><%= link_to 'Destroy', item, method: :delete, data: { confirm: 'Are you sure?' } %></td>
      </tr>
    <% end %>
  </tbody>
</table>

<!-- or just invoke model#sortable_id to get the id for sotable -->
...
<% @items.each do |item| %>
  <tr id="<%= item.sortable_id %>">
...

finally, apply sortable with Javascript.

$(function() {
  $('.sortable').railsSortable();
});

Please have a look at Use cases@wiki for further information.

jQuery plugin railsSortable is just a wrapper of jquery.ui.sortable. therefore it accepts all of sortable options.

see the https://api.jqueryui.com/sortable/ to get the details.

Fork it, then install required gems like below.

$ bundle install --path=vendor/bundle
$ bundle exec appraisal install

Please give me a PR freely.

# Test with a dummy application (rails42, rails50 and rails51 are also available)
$ bundle exec appraisal rails52 spec/dummy/bin/rake db:migrate
$ bundle exec appraisal rails52 spec/dummy/bin/rails s
# Insert test data
$ bundle exec appraisal rails52 spec/dummy/bin/rake db:seed

# Run rspecs
$ RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec appraisal rails52 spec/dummy/bin/rake db:migrate
$ bundle exec appraisal rspec # for all rails versions
$ bundle exec appraisal rails52 rspec # for specific version

MIT Licence.