How To Stop Html Form Submit

In this blog post, we will learn how to stop an HTML form from submitting using JavaScript. This can be useful in situations where you want to perform custom client-side validation or handle the form submission using AJAX.

Using JavaScript to Prevent Form Submit

One of the most straightforward ways to stop form submission is by using the event.preventDefault() method in JavaScript. This method cancels the event if it’s cancelable, meaning the default action associated with the event (in this case, the form submission) will not occur.

To use event.preventDefault(), you need to add a JavaScript event listener to your form’s submit event. Then, inside the event listener, call the event.preventDefault() method.

Here’s an example of how to do this:

    <form id="myForm">
        <!-- Your form fields go here -->
        <button type="submit">Submit</button>
    </form>

    <script>
        document.getElementById('myForm').addEventListener('submit', function(event) {
            event.preventDefault();
            // Your custom validation or AJAX code goes here
        });
    </script>
    

In the example above, we first added an id attribute to the form element so that we can easily select it using JavaScript. Then, we added an event listener to the form’s submit event and called event.preventDefault() inside the callback function. As a result, the form will not submit when the user clicks the “Submit” button, and you can add your own custom validation or AJAX code inside the callback function.

Using the “onsubmit” Attribute

Another way to stop a form from submitting is by using the onsubmit attribute directly in the form element. You can set the onsubmit attribute to a JavaScript function that returns false to prevent form submission.

Here’s an example of how to do this:

    <form onsubmit="return handleFormSubmit()">
        <!-- Your form fields go here -->
        <button type="submit">Submit</button>
    </form>

    <script>
        function handleFormSubmit() {
            // Your custom validation or AJAX code goes here

            // Return false to prevent form submission
            return false;
        }
    </script>
    

In this example, we added the onsubmit attribute to the form element and set it to a JavaScript function called handleFormSubmit(). Inside the function, you can perform your custom validation or AJAX code, and then return false to prevent the form from submitting.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we learned two methods to stop an HTML form from submitting using JavaScript: using the event.preventDefault() method and using the onsubmit attribute. These methods allow you to perform custom client-side validation or handle the form submission using AJAX, providing a better user experience on your website.