Question

I am creating a popup jquery ajax comment form using the jquery validation plugin. Why does the ajax work differently for the comment field versus the name and email fields? When the user begins typing in the comment field, the ajax response “this field is required” is removed. I would like this to also happen for the name and email fields, but they remain until the user clicks submit. How do I get the name and email fields to behave like the comment field?

Here is the js that controls the event:

  <script>
    $(document).ready(function() {
        $('#commentForm').validate({
            submitHandler: function(form) {
                $.ajax({
                    type: 'POST',
                    url: 'process.php',
                    data: $(this).serialize(),
                    success: function(returnedData) {
                        $('#commentForm').append(returnedData);
                    }
                });         
                return false;
            }
        });
    });
  </script>

The html form is configured like:

<form class="cmxform" id="commentForm" method="POST" action="">
   <p>
     <label for="cname">Name</label>
     <input id="cname" type="text" name="name" size="60" class="required" minlength="2" />
   </p>
   <p>
     <label for="cemail">E-Mail</label>
     <input id="cemail" type="text" name="email" size="60"  class="required email" />
   </p>
   <p>
     <label for="curl">URL</label>
     <input id="curl" type="text" name="url" size="60"  class="url" value="" />
   </p>
   <p>
     <label for="ccomment">Your comment</label>
     <textarea id="ccomment" type="text" name="comment" cols="72" rows="8"  class="required"></textarea>
   </p>
   <p>
     <div id="button2"><input class="submit" id="submit_btn" type="submit" value="Send Email"/></div>
   </p>
</form>

Thanks.

Answer 1

I solved this problem by utilizing the errorPlacement function in jQuery. Not specifying a errorPlacement for these elements was causing a conflict in my js.

Here is the way that I solved my issue:

$('#commentForm').validate({
    submitHandler: function(form) {
        $.ajax({
            type: 'POST',
            url: 'process.php',
            data: $(this).serialize(),
            success: function(returnedData) {
                $('#commentForm').append(returnedData);
            }

        });
        return false;
    },
    errorPlacement: function(error, element) {
        error.insertAfter(element).position({
            my: 'right top',
            at: 'right top',
            of: element
        });
        error.fadeOut(3000);
    },
});