Table of Contents
Inside this article we will see the concept i.e CodeIgniter 4 Drag and Drop Reorder Items with jQuery Tutorial. Article contains the classified information about Sorting MySQL Row Order using jQuery.
If you are looking for a solution i.e Drag & Drop Reorder Items in CodeIgniter 4 then this article will help you a lot for this. Tutorial is super easy to understand and implement it in your code as well.
We will see drag, drop and sort concept using CodeIgniter & jQuery UI. We will use sorting function of jquery ui.
Learn More –
- Laravel 9 Drag and Drop Reorder Items with jQuery
- CodeIgniter 4 How To Use Froala WYSIWYG HTML Editor Tutorial
- CodeIgniter 4 Autocomplete Places Search Box Using Google Maps JavaScript API
- PHP & MySQLi Drag and Drop Reorder Items with jQuery
Let’s get started.
CodeIgniter 4 Installation
To create a CodeIgniter 4 setup run this given command into your shell or terminal. Please make sure composer should be installed.
$ composer create-project codeigniter4/appstarter codeigniter-4
Assuming you have successfully installed application into your local system.
Environment (.env) Setup
When we install CodeIgniter 4, we will have env file at root. To use the environment variables means using variables at global scope we need to do env to .env
Either we can do via renaming file as simple as that. Also we can do by terminal command.
Open project in terminal
$ cp env .env
Above command will create a copy of env file to .env file. Now we are ready to use environment variables.
Enable Development Mode
CodeIgniter starts up in production mode by default. You need to make it in development mode to see any error if you are working with application.
Open .env file from root.
# CI_ENVIRONMENT = production
// Do it to
CI_ENVIRONMENT = development
Now application is in development mode.
Create Database
To create a database, either we can create via Manual tool of PhpMyadmin or by means of a mysql command.
We will use MySQL command to create database. Run this command into Sql tab of PhpMyAdmin.
CREATE DATABASE codeigniter4_app;
Successfully, we have created a database.
Database Connection
Open .env file from project root.
Search for DATABASE. You should see the connection environment variables into it. Put your updated details of database connection string.
#-------------------------------------------------------------------- # DATABASE #-------------------------------------------------------------------- database.default.hostname = localhost database.default.database = codeigniter4_app database.default.username = root database.default.password = root database.default.DBDriver = MySQLi database.default.DBPrefix =
Now, database successfully connected with the application.
Create Migration
Open project into terminal and run this command to create migration file.
$ php spark make:migration add_items
It will create a file –
- Migration file – 2022-09-07-031252_AddItems.php inside /app/Database/Migrations folder.
Open Migration file and write this complete code into it.
<?php namespace App\Database\Migrations; use CodeIgniter\Database\Migration; class AddItems extends Migration { public function up() { $this->forge->addField([ 'id' => [ 'type' => 'INT', 'constraint' => 5, 'unsigned' => true, 'auto_increment' => true, ], 'item_name' => [ 'type' => 'VARCHAR', 'constraint' => 50, 'null' => false ], 'priority' => [ 'type' => 'INT', 'constraint' => 5, 'null' => false, 'default' => 0 ], 'status' => [ 'type' => 'ENUM', 'constraint' => ['1', '0'], 'default' => '1', ] ]); $this->forge->addPrimaryKey('id'); $this->forge->createTable('items'); } public function down() { $this->forge->dropTable('items'); } }
Run Migration
Next,
We need to create table inside database.
$ php spark migrate
This command will create table – items inside database.
Let’s insert some Test data into this table.
Execute this sql query into database for fake rows.
INSERT INTO `items` (`id`, `item_name`, `priority`, `status`) VALUES
(1, 'Product 1', 0, '1'),
(2, 'Product 2', 0, '1'),
(3, 'Product 3', 0, '1'),
(4, 'Product 4', 0, '1'),
(5, 'Product 5', 0, '1');

Create Model & Controller
Next,
We need to create a model and a controller file.
Model File
$ php spark make:model Item
It will create a model Item.php inside /app/Models folder.
Open Item.php and write this complete code into it.
<?php namespace App\Models; use CodeIgniter\Model; class Item extends Model { protected $DBGroup = 'default'; protected $table = 'items'; protected $primaryKey = 'id'; protected $useAutoIncrement = true; protected $insertID = 0; protected $returnType = 'array'; protected $useSoftDelete = false; protected $protectFields = true; protected $allowedFields = ['item_name', 'priority', 'status']; // Dates protected $useTimestamps = false; protected $dateFormat = 'datetime'; protected $createdField = 'created_at'; protected $updatedField = 'updated_at'; protected $deletedField = 'deleted_at'; // Validation protected $validationRules = []; protected $validationMessages = []; protected $skipValidation = false; protected $cleanValidationRules = true; // Callbacks protected $allowCallbacks = true; protected $beforeInsert = []; protected $afterInsert = []; protected $beforeUpdate = []; protected $afterUpdate = []; protected $beforeFind = []; protected $afterFind = []; protected $beforeDelete = []; protected $afterDelete = []; }
Controller File
To create a controller, run this command.
$ php spark make:controller Item --suffix
It will create ItemController.php inside /app/Controllers folder.
Open ItemController.php and write this complete code into it.
<?php namespace App\Controllers; use App\Controllers\BaseController; use App\Models\Item; class ItemController extends BaseController { public function index() { $itemsObj = new Item(); $items = $itemsObj->orderBy('priority', 'ASC')->findAll(); return view("items", compact("items")); } public function updateOrder() { $input = $this->request->getVar(); if (isset($input["order"])) { $order = explode(",", $input["order"]); for ($i = 0; $i < count($order); $i++) { $itemsObj = new Item(); $data = [ 'priority' => $i ]; $itemsObj->update($order[$i], $data); } return json_encode([ "status" => true, "message" => "Order updated" ]); } } }
Create Template File
Go to /app/Views folder and create a file with name items.php
Open items.php and write this complete code into it.
<!doctype html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <title>CodeIgniter 4 Drag and Drop Reorder Items with jQuery</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="//code.jquery.com/ui/1.13.1/themes/base/jquery-ui.css"> <style> #sortable { list-style-type: none; margin: 0 auto; padding: 0; width: 60%; } #sortable li { margin: 0 3px 3px 3px; padding: 0.4em; padding-left: 1.5em; font-size: 1.4em; height: 18px; } #sortable li span { position: absolute; margin-left: -1.3em; } </style> </head> <body> <h4 style="text-align: center;">CodeIgniter 4 Drag and Drop Reorder Items with jQuery</h4> <ul id="sortable"> <?php if (count($items) > 0) { foreach ($items as $row) { ?> <li class="ui-state-default" id="<?php echo $row['id']; ?>"><span class="ui-icon ui-icon-arrowthick-2-n-s"></span><?php echo $row['item_name']; ?></li> <?php } } ?> </ul> <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.js"></script> <script src="https://code.jquery.com/ui/1.13.1/jquery-ui.js"></script> <script> $(function() { $("#sortable").sortable({ update: function(event, ui) { updateOrder(); } }); }); function updateOrder() { var item_order = new Array(); $('#sortable li').each(function() { item_order.push($(this).attr("id")); }); var order_string = 'order=' + item_order; $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "<?php echo base_url('update-order') ?>", data: order_string, cache: false, success: function(data) {} }); } </script> </body> </html>
Add Route
Open Routes.php from /app/Config folder and add these route into it.
//... $routes->get("items", "ItemController::index"); $routes->post("update-order", "ItemController::updateOrder"); //...
Application Testing
Open project terminal and start development server via command:
$ php spark serve
URL: http://localhost:8080/items
List of Items before sorting:

Drag & Sorted Items:

We hope this article helped you to learn CodeIgniter 4 Drag and Drop Reorder Items with jQuery Tutorial in a very detailed way.
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