Process form according to chosen option on alert box

Question

I'd like to modify the way some of my edit forms work...on submitting the form, the user is prompted with an aler box. If he/she chooses "Yes" then the record will be edited...on choosing "Cancel" however, the record will be saved as a new record. Is this possible?

Answer 1

No — since alert boxes only have one button :)

You could do this with a confirm, doing something like:

myForm.onsubmit = function () {
    if (confirm('Foo?')) { 
        this.elements.record.value = "edit";
    }
}

and

<input type="hidden" name="record" value="new">

However, this violates rule one and you would be better off just having:

<input type="radio" name="record" value="new" id="record_new">
<label for="record_new">New record/label>
<br>
<input type="radio" name="record" value="edit" id="record_edit" checked>
<label for="record_edit">Edit existing record/label>

Answer 2

I suppose your "alert box", which allows your user to choose between "Yes / No", is actually using the confirm() function ?

If so, confirm() will return a truthy or falsy value, depending on what the user choosed.

Which means you could use something like this :

if (confirm("Do you want to save ?")) {
    // save
} else {
    // do not save
}