jQuery how to find button values on form submit.

Question

I have a basic newsletter signup form with an email field and two buttons (subscribe and unsubscribe). I want to submit the button value as part of the ajax data but .serialize() does not include button values since they are specific to an event.

Here is my code: Javascript:

$('#newsletter_form').submit(function() {
    $.ajax({
        type:'POST',
        url:'/newsletter',
        data: $(this).serialize(),
        dataType:'json',
        success: function(data) {
            if(data['status'] == true) {
                alert(data['status']);
            }
            else {
                alert(data['error']);
            }
        }
    });
    return false;
});

HTML:

 <form id="newsletter_form"action="/newsletter/" method="post">
                <input type="text" name="email" value="Email Address" class="toggle"/>


                <button class="btn_grey" name="submit" type="submit" value="subscribe"><span>Subscribe</span></button>
                <button class="btn_grey" name="submit" type="submit" value="unsubscribe"><span>Unsubscribe</span></button>
   </form>

Edit I fixed this by using a click event on the buttons and using parent().serialize() plus attr("value") for the request data.

 $('#newsletter_form button').click(function() {
        $.ajax({
            type:'POST',
            url:'/newsletter',
            data: $(this).parent('form').serialize() + '&submit='+ $(this).attr("value"),
            dataType:'json',
            success: function(data) {
                if(data['status'] == true) {
                    alert(data['status']);
                }
                else {
                    alert(data['error']);
                }
            }
        });
        return false;
    });

Answer 1

Use click handlers on the buttons instead of a submit handler on the form. Add this.value to the data you send to the server.

Answer 2

Why not just use click handler instead and create your own object, as you have only two fields you want to send, it shouldnt be a problem;

var data = {
    'email': $('input[name="email"]').val(),
    'submit': $(this).val()
}

data.serialize();