Ajax support / Auto-save support for tabledrag.js

Just like it says, I know that the tabledrag creator at Drupalcon Boston said that ajax saving of the reweighed / restructured values created via tabledrag.js would be cool functionality to add so I'm proposing it be rolled into 7. It's a very simple process and I've actually achieved it in D6 via the outline designer module (see demo for example of drag/drop ajax saving -- https://elearning.psu.edu/demos/outline_designer/

This is the code that I've overloaded in order to accomplish this atm --

/**
* Overload tabledrag onDrop event so that it ajax saves the new parent for the node
*/
Drupal.tableDrag.prototype.onDrop = function() {
//row object so we don't have to call it all the time
var row_obj = this.rowObject.element;
//get the id of what was dragged
var drag_nid = $(row_obj).find('img').attr('id').replace('node-','').replace('-icon','');
//get the parent id based on the indentations, this equation is a bit evil...
var p_nid;
var weight = $("#edit-table-book-admin-"+ drag_nid +"-weight").val();
var active_indent = Math.max($('.indentation', row_obj).size());
//if we're at level 0 then the node is at the book root
if(active_indent != 0){
var tmp_indent = -1;
var tmp_obj = row_obj;
//keep walking backwards until we find the node we need
while (tmp_indent != (active_indent-1) ) {
tmp_obj = $(tmp_obj).prev();
tmp_indent = Math.max($('.indentation', tmp_obj).size());
}
p_nid = $(tmp_obj).find('img').attr('id').replace('node-','').replace('-icon','');
} else {
p_nid = ROOT_NID;
}
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: AJAX_PATH + "drag_drop/" + drag_nid + "/" + p_nid + "/" + weight,
success: function(msg){
//could implement some kind of history / undo list here if we want to
od_response_msg(msg);
}
});
return null;
};

The drag drop function on the other side just changes the parent / weight for the drag_nid that it's been given. jQuery ajax is how I handle it though I'm sure if we work through it we can come up with the appropriate way to make this work with anything (right now this code is just for book based transactions).

Function on the other side backend does this for the drag_drop case

case 'drag_drop':
$nid = $var1;
$parent_nid = $var2;
$weight = $var3;
//load the parent / active node
$node = node_load($nid);
$parent = node_load($parent_nid);
//set parent
$node->book['plid'] = $parent->book['mlid'];
$node->book['weight'] = $weight;
$node->revision = 1;
$node->log = "Outline Designer -- nid:$nid parent nid changed to $parent_nid";
node_save($node);
print "Node nid:$nid parent nid changed to $parent_nid";
break;

This should be easy enough to convert into allowing for block tabledrags or anything else to come across and be set correctly, even if it involes sending weight=, bid=, pid=, region= type of statements.

http://drupal.org/project/outline_designer/ for the actual module that uses this stuff

Thoughts?