Question

I have a very simple form with a name field and two submit buttons: ‘change’ and ‘delete’. I need to do some form validation in javascript when the form is submitted so I need to know which button was clicked. If the user hits the enter key, the ‘change’ value is the one that makes it to the server. So really, I just need to know if the ‘delete’ button was clicked or not.

Can I determine which button was clicked? Or do I need to change the ‘delete’ button from a submit to a regular button and catch its onclick event to submit the form?

The form looks like this:

 <form action="update.php" method="post" onsubmit="return checkForm(this);">
    <input type="text" name="tagName" size="30" value="name goes here" />
    <input type="hidden" name="tagID" value="1" />
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Change" />
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Delete" />
 </form>

In the checkForm() function, form["submit"] is a node list, not a single element I can grab the value of.

Answer 1

You could also use the onclick event in a number of different ways to address the problem.

For instance:

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Delete" 
       onclick="return TryingToDelete();" />

In the TryingToDelete() function in JavaScript, do what you want, then return false if do not want the delete to proceed.