Question

I’m having a problem with a simple html login page I made, where when I submit the login form with invalid credentials the form still submits, even though my validation method is executing the “return false” command. I know that this question has been asked a multitude of times here, but none of the answers to those questions have helped me.

My html form is as follows:

<form onSubmit="return validateForm();" method="get" action="TestPage.html">
    <div id="centralPoint" class="frame">
        <select id="centralPointSelect" data-inline="true" data-mini="true" data-native-menu="false" name="centralPoint"></select>
    </div>
    <div id="credentialsFrame" class="frame">
        <input id="userField" type="text" name="Username" />
        <input id="passField" type="password" name="Password" />
    </div>
    <div id="errorMsg"></div>
    <input id="loginBtn" type="submit" value="Login" />
    <div id="rememberMe" class="frame">
        <input type="checkbox" id="checkbox-1" class="custom" data-mini="true" name="rememberMe" />
        <label for="checkbox-1">Keep me signed in</label>
    </div>
    <div id="forgotPassFrame">
        <input id="forgotPass" type="button" data-mini="true" value="Forgot password?" />
    </div>
</form>

And here is my javascript method. Note that even if the only line of code in here is “return false;” the form still submits. I’ve also checked in firebug to make sure that the method is actually being called and that it is indeed returning false, and it all checks out.

function validateForm()
{
    var usernameTxt = $("#userField").attr("value");
    var passwordTxt = $("#passField").attr("value");

    if (usernameTxt == "" || passwordTxt == "" || (usernameTxt == userLbl && passwordTxt == passLbl))
    {
        $("#errorMsg").html("Please enter a username and password.");
        return false;
    }
}

Is there something really obvious that I’m missing? I’m not binding the onsubmit event in any way other than what you can see in the html form tag, nor am I assigning any click handler to the submit button.

It might be relevant that I’m using JQuery mobile, is it possible that this is doing something with my form?

Answer 1

If you want to handle form submission on your own, you will need to add the data-ajax="false" attribute to the <form> tag so jQuery Mobile leaves it alone.

To prevent form submissions from being automatically handled with
Ajax, add the data-ajax="false" attribute to the form element. You can
also turn off Ajax form handling completely via the ajaxEnabled global
config option.

Source: http://jquerymobile.com/demos/1.1.0/docs/forms/forms-sample.html

Here is a demo of your form but with the above attribute added: http://jsfiddle.net/XtMw9/

Doing this means that you will have to manually submit your form:

function validateForm()
{
    var usernameTxt = $("#userField").val();
    var passwordTxt = $("#passField").val();//notice the use of .val() instead of .attr()

    if (usernameTxt == "" || passwordTxt == "" || (usernameTxt == userLbl && passwordTxt == passLbl))
    {
        $("#errorMsg").html("Please enter a username and password.");
        return false;
    }

    var $form = $('form');
    $.ajax({
        url     : $form.attr('action'),
        type    : $form.attr('method'),
        data    : $form.serialize(),
        success : function (response) { ... },
        error   : function (a, b, c) { console.log(b); }
    });
}

Explanation

This works because by default jQuery Mobile will attempt to submit any form via AJAX. Using the data-ajax="false" attribute we can tell jQuery Mobile to leave a specific form alone so we can submit it on our own.