form action="javascript:block();" redirects to javascript:block(); url in firefox

Question

Hi there,

I have a function called block which simply return false;

this is meant to stop the form being submitted so the ajax functions can capture its submit, however firefox seems to treat it as an actual url and loads the url javascript:block();

if i have action="javascript: return false;" then firefox doesnt even let the ajax functions handle it.

how can i fix this?

Answer 1

Javascript code doesn't belong in the action attribute. You can use the onsubmit event.

<form onsubmit="return false;" .... >

note however that it's considered good style to specify an action that will work if the user has JavaScript turned off (graceful degradation). If you don't specify an action property, the form will be submitted to the current page URL.

@Justin correctly notes that having JavaScript code in the HTML markup is strictly speaking always a bit dirty. The good practice would be giving the form an id attribute, and assigning the JavaScript code to that element in the head part.

With pure Javascript:

document.onload = function() {
  document.getElementById("formid").onload = function() {  ..... }
}

With jQuery

$(document).ready(function() {
  $("#formid").load(function() { .... });
});

Answer 2

put the function call in onsubmit="..."

Answer 3

<form method="POST" action="Some url" onSubmit="doAjaxSubmit()">

</form>

The function looks like this

   function doAjaxSubmit() {
      // doe your custom  ajax here.
      // ...
      return false; // so that form does not submit
   }

Answer 4

You need to take advantage of the onsubmit event of the form element:

<form action="url_to_post_to" onsubmit="block();">
    <!-- your form here -->
</form>

Answer 5

The proper way to attach events is not through HTML attributes, but unobtrusively through JavaScript itself using the traditional or advanced model.

An example of the traditional model

var block = function() {
    ...
};

document.getElementById("my-form").onsubmit = block;