jQuery UI Draggable/Sortable - Get reference to new item

Question

I am using the jQuery UI Draggable/Sortable demo (http://jqueryui.com/demos/draggable/#sortable) for the basis of my project. I need to get a reference to the

Answer 1

If you don't fear accessing the Sortable's internal state, you can do the following:

$('#sortable').sortable({
  receive: function() {
    // Sortable.currentItem refers to the item just added.
    // jQuery UI < 1.10 uses "sortable" as its data key,
    // jQuery UI >= 1.10 defines an "instance" method to get the current instance.
    var $item =
      (
        $('#sortable').data('sortable') || // jQuery UI < 1.10
        $('#sortable').sortable('instance') // jQuery UI >= 1.10
      ).currentItem;
  }
);

Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/t33bt/12/

Keep in mind though, that this might not work in a future jQuery UI version anymore because it doesn't use the official API. But nonetheless it works even in jQuery UI 1.11 (current version as of time of this writing).