Get ID of dragged list item in a sortable jQuery

Question

I have this html:

<ul>
    <li id='item1'>First</li>
    <li id='item2'>Second</li>
    <li id='item3'>Third</li>
</ul>

and this .sortable jQuery:

$(function(){
    $("#listofpages").sortable({

    }
})

How can I get the id of the dragged element?

Answer 1

Inside the update event callback you can do this (demo):

$( "#listofpages" ).sortable({
  update: function( event, ui ) {
    var id = ui.item.attr("id");
  }
});

Answer 2

The previous answer was very good however you should use the receive event not update, update fires twice as often as needed and can cause problems because it is firing once for element removed from previous list and fired once for element added to new list.

$( "#listofpages" ).sortable({
  receive: function( event, ui ) {
    var id = ui.item.attr("id");
  }
});