jQuery Validate: Remove element AFTER validation BEFORE submit?

Question

I have a SVG map of a city that when clicked, creates hidden elements in a div in my form.

I'm using the jQuery Validation Plugin to validate my form.

In order to make sure that the user has clicked on an area of the map, I thought to create a dummy hidden element inside where the normal hidden elements are and put the validation rule on that. I wrote my own validation rule to check for the number of hidden elements (indicating that a user has clicked somewhere on the map). That rule is this:

$.validator.methods.zones = function (value, element, param) {
   return ($('#search_form #zone-selectors input').length > 1); // 1 instead of 0 to account for the dummy element
};

<div id="zone-selectors">
  <input type="hidden" name="dummy">
</div>

However, I cannot allow that dummy element to be submitted with the rest of the form; I need to remove it AFTER the form has been validated but BEFORE the form is submitted. Naturally, I thought to use the submitHandler option for validate():

// ...
submitHandler: function(form) {
   $(form).find('input[name=dummy]').remove();
   $(form).submit();
},
// ...

... but this seems to create an infinite loop, and my browser times-out the script. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The submitHandler needs a tweak, like this:

submitHandler: function(form) {
   $(form).find('input[name=dummy]').remove();
   form.submit();
}

Calling the jQuery .submit() trigger causes validation again, and an infinite loop...you want to call the native .submit() function here.