Question

I’m keen to use the jQuery validator plugin to validate my code, but I would like to disable to automatic submitting of my form. I’d rather send it myself using the jQuery $.post method.

In fact, I’m not really sure why my form is submitting considering that my buttons aren’t of type submit but are just <button></button>.

<form id="my_form" name="my_form" method="post" action="">
    ...
    <button id="previous_button" class="nav-button">Previous</button>
    <button id="next_button" class="nav-button">Next</button>
</form>

and my onClick listener, in which I am hoping that on valid input I can post the form data and then move to a new page, else reposition the window so that the user sees the `error_messages’ box where all my error messages show up.

$('#next_button').click(function(event) {
    validateAndSave();
});

function validateAndSave() {
    if($('#my_form').valid()) {
        $.post('save_form_to_database.php', 
            $('#my_form').serialize());
        window.location = 'next_page.php';
    } else {
        // reposition to see the error messages
        window.location = '#error_messages';
    }
}

The result of this though (and the result is the same whether debug is set to true or false) is that on valid input, I can see by looking at the status bar that `next_page.php’ flashes up briefly and then I get taken back to my original page again. Also on failure of validation, my page doesn’t seem to reposition itself properly.

So my questions are:

• Why is my page being redirected back to the original page?

• How can I use the validator to validate, but then post the form my own way using $.post?

Many thanks in advance.

Update thanks to the responses

According to this page on the button element:

The TYPE attribute of BUTTON specifies the kind of button and takes the value submit (the default), reset, or button

So my buttons were taking the default value of type="submit"

Answer 1

Specify your buttons as type=”button” to stop the automatic submit. This one gets me all the time.