jQuery UI: sortable('toArray') returns an empty array

Question

This has me stumped. The follow code returns ",,,,,,":

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
    $('#listB').sortable({
        connectWith: '#listA',
        update: function(event, ui) {
            var result = $(this).sortable('toArray');
            alert(result);
            }
    });
    $('#listA').sortable({
        connectWith: '#listB'
    });
});
</script>

<div id="boxA">
    <ul id="listA" class="myList">
        <li value="1">Item A</li>
        <li value="2">Item B</li>
        <li value="3">Item C</li>
        <li value="4">Item D</li>
        <li value="5">Item E</li>
        <li value="6">Item F</li>
        <li value="7">Item G</li>
    </ul>
</div>

<div id="boxB">
    <ul id="listB" class="myList">
        <li value="1">Item A</li>
        <li value="2">Item B</li>
        <li value="3">Item C</li>
        <li value="4">Item D</li>
        <li value="5">Item E</li>
        <li value="6">Item F</li>
        <li value="7">Item G</li>
    </ul>
</div>

Why?! It's driving me insane! Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can define which attribute to fetch like this:

var result = $(this).sortable('toArray', {attribute: 'value'});

Answer 2

.sortable('toArray') serializes items Ids into array, and your items have no Ids, that's why you have empty strings.

Answer 3

I see a few purely javascript answers. They work but beware, they may not return the items in the order that is visible on the screen. Using the code below, see jtsalva above, will return the items in the proper sorted order. This had me stumped for a while because I wanted to save the new order to a database, so I could reload the grid where someone left off.

var result = $(this).sortable('toArray', {attribute: 'value'});