Question

I have a simple form which accepts a Title and a Contents variable from a textbox and a textarea. The form will send its data to a file called add-post.php. However, I am looking for a way to alert the user that either the textbox or the textarea has invalid data (is empty) in case they click the submission button.

I was thinking that an alert() popup box would be the best idea because it doesn’t redirect to any other page and the user never loses their data (imagine they entered a whole lot of text but forgot a title. Sending the data to add-post.php and performing the check there will result in loss of data for the user).

However, I’m not sure how to actually implement the alert() popup. How would I make it so that the check is done AFTER they have clicked the submit button but BEFORE the data is sent off to the next file. Any advice is appreciated.

Answer 1

On your form add something like this

<form name="frm1" onsubmit="InputChecker()">

Then in javascript

<script type="text/javascript">
function InputChecker()
{
    if(document.getElementById({formElement}) != '')  { // not empty
        alert("This element needs data"); // Pop an alert
        return false; // Prevent form from submitting
    }
}
</script>

Also as others have said jQuery makes this a little bit easier. I highly recommend the jQuery Validate Plugin

Some people do find the alert box “annoying”, so it may be better to append a message into the DOM to let the user know what needs to be fixed. This is useful if there are numerous errors as the errors will be more persistent allowing the user to see all the things they need to be fixed. Again, the jQuery Validate plugin has this functionality built in.