Question

Why serialize (Jquery) does not include submit button name?

In PHP I normally do this:

if (isset($_POST['submit_signup'])) {
    print_r($_POST);
    //Then check firstname, password, etc POSTS
}

That don’t work, what is the solution to this?

Answer 1

Not sure if this is the most elegant solution, but you can use a hidden input box to contain a value (preferably something that changes, like a sort of hash) and check for that. Like:

<input type="hidden" name="signup_submitted" value="random_hash" />

And in your code you can do:

if(isset($_POST['signup_submitted']))
{
    // Do your work;
}

Warning: A hash is not a security thing here, only a way to do the same thing you’re used to.

Small Update: I noticed you also asked ‘why’ JQuery does not include the submit button in the serialize() output. This is default behaviour as specified in the HTML draft(s). As long as no submit button is pressed, it should not be included in the submitted (or serialized) data. The JQuery creators decided to honour that and not include it in the serialized string.