Question

the html code:

<labelName</label>
  <input type="text" name="name" id="name" size="30" value="" class="text-input" />
  <label class="error" for="name" id="name_error">This field is required.</label>

the js code:

               var name = $("input#name").val();
    if (name == "") {
    $("label#name_error").show();
    $("input#name").focus();
    return false;
  }

why use the return false;? could i use exit? thank you.

Answer 1

Assuming that your validation code is called on a onSubmit event chain such as in

$('form').onSubmit(function(event) {
  // do validation
  return false;
}

return false is used to block the form submission to continue. Without it the form submission will continue and the action page will be loaded.

other then “return false;”, you could also add “event.preventDefault();” for blocking the form submission.

The same method could also be used in other event. For example, if you want to block a click event from a link (which by default would load the page specified on href), you could do :

$('a').click(function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  return false;
}