I just want to know whether there is a way to answer this question with "Yes" without using JavaScript.
What I want to do is have a search form that automatically generates URLs like http://example.com/search/my+search+term or something similar when I enter my search term into a search text field.
EDIT: Due to some mis-understanding (and not being clear on my part), a clarification: I want the browser to generate that URL based on the value of the text field when the form is submitted.
No, it's not possible without using JavaScript.
The best you can do is using a GET action and have an url like http://example.com/search/?q=my+search+term, where q is the name of the input search box.
Using html only, no.
You could have something server side that might work. You could have the server respond with a 302 response code. If you are using Apache, you could probably use mod_rewrite to take the GET request and generate a new url.
For example, the browser might ask for http://example.com/search/?q=blah+foo+bar, the server could then take that and send the browser a 302 redirect for http://example.com/search/blah+foo+bar.
See more information at the Apache url rewriting guide, or by using your favorite search engine.
You could still use javascript to generate the correct url, but if someone has javascript disabled, this would work as a fallback.
The answer is No
No if you want it to be client side, if you can do it server side (by submitting the form) you can use something like PHP
Yes you could perform something like this server-side pretty easily as long as you don't mind submitting a form.
EDIT: Upon further clarification from the author in comments below: It is not possible in a pure client-side manner without JavaScript or some other client-side tool like Flash/Silverlight (which is admittedly overkill).
Related
If I start out on the page example.com/example and click and a link <a href="?this">, I get sent to example.com/example?this. But if I start out on example.com/example?that and click <a href="?this">, ?this overwrites ?that and I get sent to example.com/example?this.
Is there an HTML only (no javascript) way to have a link send me to example.com/example?this&that if I start out on example.com/example?that but send me to example.com/example?this if I start out on example.com/example?
No, there isn't. You will have to use a server-side language or JavaScript to build the hrefs in order to achieve this.
The better question is whether it is really a good idea to heavily rely on query parameters or whether you could make use of some .htaccess URL rewriting (that is internally mapped to query parameters, but they will always be available as long as the URL structure is intact). You could also make use of session storage in your server-side language.
No, html urls are relative to the path you are currently on, not including query strings. You will need javascript.
I am volunteering on a website-based project that is trying to make all pages fully operable JavaScript free before adding any JavaScript for enhancements, and I was asked to investigate whether or not a particular scenario could be handled purely through HTML/CSS.
What we have is a form that is populated to help us filter a list of tickets that are displayed on the screen after a page update through a GET action, which itself works fine, but the concern with the current implementation is that the URL cannot be made into a permanent link. The request, however, to keep the permanent link as minimal as possible, is to only send GET parameters for fields that are populated with something (so, suppressing GET parameters for fields that are blank) instead of having a different GET parameter for each form field on the page.
I have thought of several ways that could be done, most including JavaScript (example: create fields with ids but no names and a hidden field w/ name that uses JS to grab the data from the fields), but also one that would be a POST action with a redirect back to the GET with a human readable string that could be permanently used. The lead dev, however would prefer not to go through the POST/redirect method if at all possible.
That being said, I'm trying to make sure I cover all my bases and ask experts their thoughts on this before I strongly push for the POST/redirect solution: Is there a way using only HTML & CSS to directly suppress GET parameters of a form for fields that are blank without using a POST/redirect?
No, suppressing fields from being submitted in an HTML form with method of "GET" is not possible without using JavaScript, or instead submitting the form with a POST method and using a server side function to minimize the form.
What fields are submitted are defined by the HTML specification and HTML and CSS alone cannot modify this behavior and still have the browser be compliant with the standards.
No, you cannot programmatically suppress any default browser behavior without using some kind of client scripting language, like JavaScript.
As a side note, you say "JavaScript for enhancements", but JavaScript is not used for enhancements these days. And no one in the real world would except a decent front-end without the use of JavaScript. I would suggest you simply use JavaScript.
I do not think you can avoid Javascript here to pre process before submission to eliminate unchanged /empty form fields.
I am starting web developement.
While POSTing a form, all the input fields are sent as properties (Content-Disposition). I would like to add more information (I mean more properties sent by POST), like a value of some html tag, or the value of an attribut of some div. Is this possible ?
Well an idea to resolve that is to use "hidden input" (#html.HiddenFor). That's what I am going to do waiting for better solution.
What server side technology are you using? You will likely use JavaScript to get other values from your form then submit, but it really just depends. You may want to be more specific.
I read some AJAX-Form tutorial like this. The tag form is used in HTML code. However, I believed that it is not necessary. Since we send HTTP request through XmlHttpRequest, the sent data can be anything, not necessary input in form.
So, is there any reason to have form tag in HTML for AJAX application?
Apart from progressive enhancement as already discussed (don't make your site require JavaScript until it really has to), a <form> with onsubmit would be necessary to reliably catch an Enter keypress submission.
(Sure, you can try trapping keypresses on separate form fields, but it's fiddly, fragile and will never 100% reproduce the browser's native behaviour over what constitutes a form submission.)
Sometimes, web apps using ajax to transform their data either use forms as a fallback when the user has no JavaScript enabled (a sometimes expensive but very good thing to do).
Otherwise, if an application builds and sends an AJAX request, there is no compelling reason to use a form except in rare special cases when you actually need a form element. Off the top of my head:
when using jQuery's form serialize function
when monitoring all fields in a form for changes
when there is need to make use of the reset form button (that to my knowledge is available in a proper <form> only).
I see at least two possible reasons :
Graceful degradation (see also Unobtrusive JavaScript) : if a user doesn't have Javascript enabled in his browser, your website should still work, with plain-old HTML.
Behavior of the browser : users know what forms look like and how they behave (auto-completion, error-correction, ...) ; it's best not going too far away from that
And I would add that, if you want the user to input some data, that's why <form> and <input> tags exist ;-)
Using the right tags also helps users -- as an example, think about blind users who are navigating with some specific software : those software will probably have a specific behavior for forms an input fields.
It really depends what you're doing. If you're wanting to take form content submitted by the user and use AJAX to send that somewhere then you're going to want to use the form tag so your user can enter their data somewhere.
There will be other times when you're not sending data from a form and in that case, you wont have a form to be concerned about :)
the site addres: http://www.ynet.co.il/YediothPortal/Ext/TalkBack/CdaTalkBack/1,2497,L-3650194-0-68-544-0--,00.html
fill the form with rubbish.
Hit 'Send'
the form post the data to another HTML without any parsing of the data i've just added
How do they do it?
A likely option is that they are using a content management system where "html" on the URL doesn't actually mean it's a static html file.
This may be out of left field, but I've certainly used the occasional JS function to grab everything in the header and either parse it or pass it to another script using AJAX.
I'll sometimes use this method in a 404.html page to grab the headers of the previous page, parse them out to see where someone was trying to go and redirect them.
That is, as annakata said, one of the numerous options available.
Edit based on clarified question:
Numerous frameworks can be configured to intercept an html request - for instance asp.net can be set to handle any given extension and an HTTPModule could do anything with that. It's really up to web server configuration what it decides to do with any request.
also: you don't really want to be saying "hijack"