Question

I am using JQuery’s validate plugin to validate a form. Validation occurs and the submitHandler is triggered. But then I get this error (from IE8):

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;
MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0;
.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727;
.NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR
3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0C;
.NET4.0E) Timestamp: Fri, 20 May 2011
16:30:56 UTC

Message: Object doesn’t support this
property or method

It works as it should in Firefox- no errors at all. Any ideas why the form.submit() method doesn’t work?

JQuery

$(document).ready(function() {
    $.validator.addClassRules('valcount',{digits: true, min: 1});

    //Fish Form
    $("form[name='fish']").validate({
        debug: true,
        ignore: ":hidden,[name='']", // do not validate form fields in invisible sections
        errorPlacement: function(error, element) {
            if ( element.is(":radio") ) {
                error.appendTo( element.parent().next().next() );
            }else if(element.is(":checkbox") && element.parent().is('li')){
                error.insertBefore(element.closest("ul.horiz"));
            }else{
                error.appendTo(element.parent());
            };
        },
        rules: {
            fish_name: {required:true, minlength:5},
            care_id: {required: true, digits: true, min: 1},
            strain_id: {required: true, digits: true, min: 1},
            transgene_id: {digits: true, min: 0}
        },
        // set this class to error-labels to indicate valid fields
        success: function(label) { // set   as text for IE
            label.html(" ").addClass("checked");
        },          
        submitHandler: function(form){
            if(confirm('Are you sure?'))form.submit(); //PROBLEM var has no such method
        }
    });

});// end $(document).ready(function(){

Form HTML

<form action='http://example.com' method='post' name='fish' id='fish'>
        <input name='fish_id' type="hidden" value="39" >

        <div><label for='fish_name'>Fish Name</label><input name='fish_name' id='fish_name' type='text' value='110208'></div>
        <div><label for='fishnotes'>Notes</label><textarea name='notes' id=fishnotes></textarea></div>
        <div><label for='care_id'>Animal Care Protocol</label><select name='care_id' id='care_id'><option value='1' selected="selected">Breeding Colony</option>
</select></div>
        <div><label for='strain_id'>Strain</label><select name='strain_id' id='strain_id'><option value='1' selected="selected">AB wt</option>
<option value='2' >Tub wt</option>
<option value='14' >AB/Tub</option>
<option value='15' >AB/Tub deadhead</option>
<option value='16' >Casper</option>
</select></div>
        <div><label for='transgene_id'>Transgene</label><select name='transgene_id' id='transgene_id'><option value=0>None</options><option value='1' >Ztag</option>
<option value='2' >KDR-eGFP</option>
<option value='3' >BTIAR-eGFP</option>
<option value='4' >BTIA-eGFP</option>
<option value='5' >BTTP3.1-eGFP</option>
<option value='6' >BTTP6.2-eGFP</option>
<option value='7' >BTIAR-Luc</option>
<option value='8' >BTIA-Luc</option>
<option value='9' >BTTP3.1-Luc</option>
<option value='10' >BTTP6.2-Luc</option>
<option value='11' >Tg(hsp70tolgfp)v28</option>
<option value='16' >blither</option>
</select></div>

<div><input value='Edit' type='submit' ></div>
</form>

Edited: removed submit name and id, added info about FF. Tried with $(form).submit() instead of form.submit(). Still no joy.

Answer 1

It turns out the problem is a conflict between jquery 1.6.x and validate plug-in 1.8.x. When I reverted to jquery 1.5, the issue went away. It’s not a very good fix, but hopefully it will save someone some head scratching.

ETA: it appears that validate version 1.8.1, recently released, will fix this problem too. Note that as of May 24th, 1.8.0 is the version hosted at http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jquery.validate/1.8/jquery.validate.min.js