jQuery Form Plugin

 

Form Plugin API

http://malsup.com/jquery/form/#getting-started

 

The Form Plugin API provides several methods that allow you to easily manage form data and form submission.

ajaxForm

Prepares a form to be submitted via AJAX by adding all of the necessary event listeners. It does not submit the form. Use ajaxForm in your document's ready function to prepare your form(s) for AJAX submission. ajaxForm takes zero or one argument. The single argument can be either a callback function or an Options Object.
Chainable: Yes.

Note: You can pass any of the standard $.ajax options to ajaxForm

Example:

$('#myFormId').ajaxForm();

ajaxSubmit

Immediately submits the form via AJAX. In the most common use case this is invoked in response to the user submitting the form. ajaxSubmit takes zero or one argument. The single argument can be either a callback function or an Options Object.
Chainable: Yes.

Note: You can pass any of the standard $.ajax options to ajaxSubmit

Example:

// attach handler to form's submit event 
$('#myFormId').submit(function() { 
    // submit the form 
    $(this).ajaxSubmit(); 
    // return false to prevent normal browser submit and page navigation 
    return false; 
});

formSerialize

Serializes the form into a query string. This method will return a string in the format: name1=value1&name2=value2
Chainable: No, this method returns a String.

Example:

var queryString = $('#myFormId').formSerialize(); 
 
// the data could now be submitted using $.get, $.post, $.ajax, etc 
$.post('myscript.php', queryString); 
        

fieldSerialize

Serializes field elements into a query string. This is handy when you need to serialize only part of a form. This method will return a string in the format: name1=value1&name2=value2
Chainable: No, this method returns a String.

Example:

var queryString = $('#myFormId .specialFields').fieldSerialize();

fieldValue

Returns the value(s) of the element(s) in the matched set in an array. As of version .91, this method always returns an array. If no valid value can be determined the array will be empty, otherwise it will contain one or more values.
Chainable: No, this method returns an array.

Example:

// get the value of the password input 
var value = $('#myFormId :password').fieldValue(); 
alert('The password is: ' + value[0]); 

resetForm

Resets the form to its original state by invoking the form element's native DOM method.
Chainable: Yes.

Example:

$('#myFormId').resetForm();

clearForm

Clears the form elements. This method emptys all of the text inputs, password inputs and textarea elements, clears the selection in any select elements, and unchecks all radio and checkbox inputs.
Chainable: Yes.

$('#myFormId').clearForm();

clearFields

Clears field elements. This is handy when you need to clear only a part of the form.
Chainable: Yes.

$('#myFormId .specialFields').clearFields();

The Options Object

Note: You can pass any of the standard $.ajax options to ajaxForma and ajaxSubmit.

Both ajaxForm and ajaxSubmit support numerous options which can be provided using an Options Object. The Options Object is simply a JavaScript Object that contains properties with values set as follows:

target

Identifies the element(s) in the page to be updated with the server response. This value may be specified as a jQuery selection string, a jQuery object, or a DOM element.
Default value: null

url

URL to which the form data will be submitted.
Default value: value of form's action attribute

type

The method in which the form data should be submitted, 'GET' or 'POST'.
Default value: value of form's method attribute (or 'GET' if none found)

beforeSubmit

Callback function to be invoked before the form is submitted. The 'beforeSubmit' callback can be provided as a hook for running pre-submit logic or for validating the form data. If the 'beforeSubmit' callback returns false then the form will not be submitted. The 'beforeSubmit' callback is invoked with three arguments: the form data in array format, the jQuery object for the form, and the Options Object passed into ajaxForm/ajaxSubmit. The array of form data takes the following form:

[ { name: 'username', value: 'jresig' }, { name: 'password', value: 'secret' } ]

Default value: null

success

Callback function to be invoked after the form has been submitted. If a 'success' callback function is provided it is invoked after the response has been returned from the server. It is passed the responseText or responseXML value (depending on the value of the dataType option).

Default value: null

dataType

Expected data type of the response. One of: null, 'xml', 'script', or 'json'. The dataType option provides a means for specifying how the server response should be handled. This maps directly to the jQuery.httpData method. The following values are supported:

'xml': if dataType == 'xml' the server response is treated as XML and the 'success' callback method, if specified, will be passed the responseXML value

'json': if dataType == 'json' the server response will be evaluted and passed to the 'success' callback, if specified

'script': if dataType == 'script' the server response is evaluated in the global context

Default value: null

semantic

Boolean flag indicating whether data must be submitted in strict semantic order (slower). Note that the normal form serialization is done in semantic order with the exception of input elements of type="image". You should only set the semantic option to true if your server has strict semantic requirements and your form contains an input element of type="image".
Default value: false

resetForm

Boolean flag indicating whether the form should be reset if the submit is successful
Default value: null

clearForm

Boolean flag indicating whether the form should be cleared if the submit is successful
Default value: null

iframe

Boolean flag indicating whether the form should always target the server response to an iframe. This is useful in conjuction with file uploads. See the File Uploads documentation on the Code Samples page for more info.
Default value: false

Example:

// prepare Options Object 
var options = { 
    target:     '#divToUpdate', 
    url:        'comment.php', 
    success:    function() { 
        alert('Thanks for your comment!'); 
    } 
}; 
 
// pass options to ajaxForm 
$('#myForm').ajaxForm(options); 

Note that the Options Object can also be used to pass values to jQuery's $.ajax method. If you are familiar with the options supported by $.ajax you may use them in the Options Object passed to ajaxForm and ajaxSubmit.