Drag-and-Drop Sorting for Eloquent Models with Reorderable for Laravel

Laravel Reorderable by Richie McMullen adds drag-and-drop sorting to any Eloquent model. It ships with ready-made Blade and Livewire components, persists new positions automatically via a package route, and supports scoping sort order within a parent group.

This package works by applying the HasSortOrder trait and ReorderableContract to your model:

use Atomcoder\LaravelReorderable\Contracts\ReorderableContract;
use Atomcoder\LaravelReorderable\Traits\HasSortOrder;
 
class Task extends Model implements ReorderableContract
{
    use HasSortOrder;
 
    protected $fillable = ['title', 'project_id', 'sort_order'];
    protected string $sortColumn = 'sort_order';
 
    public function getReorderLabel(): string
    {
        return $this->title;
    }
}

The trait automatically assigns a sort position on creation and adds an ordered() query scope so you fetch records in the right sequence.

Blade and Livewire Components

The package covers both rendering approaches. Drop an @include into a Blade view, or use the Livewire component — both accept the same options:

Blade:

@include('reorderable::components.list', [
    'items' => $tasks,
    'modelClass' => App\Models\Task::class,
    'groupColumn' => 'project_id',
    'groupValue' => $project->id,
    'title' => 'Reorder Tasks',
    'listId' => 'project-tasks-list',
])

Livewire:

<livewire:reorderable-list
    :items="$tasks"
    model-class="App\Models\Task"
    group-column="project_id"
    :group-value="$project->id"
    title="Reorder Tasks"
    list-id="project-tasks-list"
/>

When a user drags an item, the component posts the new order to POST /reorderable/update, which updates the sort column for each record in the database.

Grouped Reordering

The package restricts sort operations to a parent group, so dragging tasks in one project doesn't affect tasks in another. The same scoping is available programmatically via moveToPosition() or reorderFromArray():

$task->moveToPosition(
    position: 2,
    groupColumn: 'project_id',
    groupValue: $task->project_id,
);
 
Task::reorderFromArray(
    orderedIds: [8, 3, 5, 1],
    groupColumn: 'project_id',
    groupValue: 12,
);

The Generator Command

Instead of wiring up the trait and configuration by hand, reorderable:make scaffolds everything from the command line:

php artisan reorderable:make Task --table=tasks --label=title --column=sort_order

The --label option controls which attribute shows in the drag-and-drop UI, and --column sets the sort column name if you're not using the default sort_order.

Authorization and Events

The configuration accepts a closure to gate access to the update route, so you can tie it to a policy or role check:

'authorize' => function ($request, string $modelClass): bool {
    return $request->user()?->can('manage-content') ?? false;
},

After a successful reorder, the package dispatches ItemsReordered, which carries the model class, the ordered IDs, and the group column and value — useful for cache busting or audit logging.