Dashboard - get status and position of metaboxes and pass them to ajax method

Question

I'm wondering if it's possible to get status and position of metaboxes added to a dashboard-like page.

The main page of my plugin has several metaboxes laying in a two-columns page and a "table of content" box on top (with internal links, like a wikipedia page). However, since you can order/hide/reveal a metabox, the TOC box should be updated accordingly via an ajax method.

Is it possible to trigger a method like that, passing all parameters i need to accomplish the ordering (position and status of all metaboxes)?

tnx in advance,

Gabriele

Answer 1

You can hook into the sortstop event of the sortable metaboxes, and read the current state:

jQuery( function( $ ) {
    $( '.meta-box-sortables' ).bind( 'sortstop', function( event, ui ) {
        var sortData = {};
        $('.meta-box-sortables').each( function() {
            sortData[this.id.split('-')[0]] = $(this).sortable( 'toArray' );
        } );
        console.log( sortData );
    } );
} );

You can also hook into the events that hide or reveal metaboxes, but this requires some more work on your side, since WordPress does not provide nice events for this. See the postbox.js script for more details.

There are other answers on this site that deal with the Ajax part.