I am trying to create a search box on my site. However when someone clicks "search" or presses "enter/return". I want a separate tab to open with the search results from a different site to be displayed.
Example:
My site: www.example.com
# using another answer on stackoverflow
# I have tried a lot of different action urls.
# the website url to which I want to send the search:
<form method="get" action="website.com/?searchTerm">
<input type="text" name="searchTerm"/>
</form>
When I try to demo it using the above and press enter, I simply go to the website i.e. website.com/?searchTerm not the results page.
Another approach I thought might work is to replace the searchTerm in the url of the results page of the website when Enter or button is clicked on www.example.com using a tags.
You can use the target attribute on the form tag.
Don’t forget to inform your users, including screen reader users, that the action will open a new tab.
If you use the GET method, input names and values are going to be passed as query parameters. So <input name="searchTerm" value="test"> will become ?searchTerm=test in the requested URL.
get: The GET method; form data appended to the action URL with a ? separator. Use this method when the form has no side-effects.
<form method="get" target="_blank" action="https://example.com/SearchDisplay">
<label>Search Term
<input type="search" name="searchTerm">
</label>
<button type="submit">Search (opens in new tab)</button>
</form>
The above code would not work in an interactive stack snippet, because it would be inside an iframe.
For your search to actually work with the target site
If you inspect the search form on your target website, you’ll notice they use SearchDisplay as the action. Additionally, they include a bunch of hidden fields in their form. You will need to figure out which ones to include in your form as well, for your query to not get blocked.
Beware, though, that this are implementation details of the target shop, not a stable search API like OpenSearch. So it might change at any time, and your search form will no longer work.
The form code from the target website:
<form accept-charset="UTF-8" name="CatalogSearchForm" action="SearchDisplay" method="get" id="searchForm" class="searchForm">
<div class="search-input-wrapper" role="group" aria-label="...">
<div class="search-input-field">
<input type="hidden" name="storeId" value="5451206" id="WC_CachedHeaderDisplay_FormInput_storeId_In_CatalogSearchForm_1">
<input type="hidden" name="catalogId" value="10002" id="WC_CachedHeaderDisplay_FormInput_catalogId_In_CatalogSearchForm_1">
<input type="hidden" name="langId" value="-3" id="WC_CachedHeaderDisplay_FormInput_langId_In_CatalogSearchForm_1">
<input type="hidden" name="pageSize" value="10" id="WC_CachedHeaderDisplay_FormInput_pageSize_In_CatalogSearchForm_1">
<input type="hidden" name="beginIndex" value="0" id="WC_CachedHeaderDisplay_FormInput_beginIndex_In_CatalogSearchForm_1">
<input type="hidden" name="sType" value="SimpleSearch" id="WC_CachedHeaderDisplay_FormInput_sType_In_CatalogSearchForm_1">
…
Is it possible to nest html forms like this
<form name="mainForm">
<form name="subForm">
</form>
</form>
so that both forms work? My friend is having problems with this, a part of the subForm works, while another part of it does not.
In a word, no. You can have several forms in a page but they should not be nested.
From the html5 working draft:
4.10.3 The form element
Content model:
Flow content, but with no form element descendants.
The HTML5 <input> form attribute can be the solution.
From http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_input_form.asp:
The form attribute is new in HTML5.
Specifies which <form> element an <input> element belongs to. The value of this attribute must be the id attribute of a <form> element in the same document.
Scenario:
input_Form1_n1
input_Form2_n1
input_Form1_n2
input_Form2_n2
Implementation:
<form id="Form1" action="Action1.php" method="post"></form>
<form id="Form2" action="Action2.php" method="post"></form>
<input type="text" name="input_Form1_n1" form="Form1" />
<input type="text" name="input_Form2_n1" form="Form2" />
<input type="text" name="input_Form1_n2" form="Form1" />
<input type="text" name="input_Form2_n2" form="Form2" />
<input type="submit" name="button1" value="buttonVal1" form="Form1" />
<input type="submit" name="button2" value="buttonVal2" form="Form2" />
Here you'll find browser's compatibility.
It is possible to achieve the same result as nested forms, but without nesting them.
HTML5 introduced the form attribute. You can add the form attribute to form controls outside of a form to link them to a specific form element (by id).
https://www.impressivewebs.com/html5-form-attribute/
This way you can structure your html like this:
<form id="main-form" action="/main-action" method="post"></form>
<form id="sub-form" action="/sub-action" method="post"></form>
<div class="main-component">
<input type="text" name="main-property1" form="main-form" />
<input type="text" name="main-property2" form="main-form" />
<div class="sub-component">
<input type="text" name="sub-property1" form="sub-form" />
<input type="text" name="sub-property2" form="sub-form" />
<input type="submit" name="sub-save" value="Save" form="sub-form" />
</div>
<input type="submit" name="main-save" value="Save" form="main-form" />
</div>
The form attribute is supported by all modern browsers. IE does not support this though but IE is not a browser anymore, rather a compatibility tool, as confirmed by Microsoft itself: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-security-chief-ie-is-not-a-browser-so-stop-using-it-as-your-default/. It's about time we stop caring about making things work in IE.
https://caniuse.com/#feat=form-attribute
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastructure.html#attr-fae-form
From the html spec:
This feature allows authors to work around the lack of support for
nested form elements.
The second form will be ignored, see the snippet from WebKit for example:
bool HTMLParser::formCreateErrorCheck(Token* t, RefPtr<Node>& result)
{
// Only create a new form if we're not already inside one.
// This is consistent with other browsers' behavior.
if (!m_currentFormElement) {
m_currentFormElement = new HTMLFormElement(formTag, m_document);
result = m_currentFormElement;
pCloserCreateErrorCheck(t, result);
}
return false;
}
Plain html cannot allow you to do this. But with javascript you can be able to do that.
If you are using javascript/jquery you could classify your form elements with a class and then use serialize() to serialize only those form elements for the subset of the items you want to submit.
<form id="formid">
<input type="text" class="class1" />
<input type="text" class="class2">
</form>
Then in your javascript you could do this to serialize class1 elements
$(".class1").serialize();
For class2 you could do
$(".class2").serialize();
For the whole form
$("#formid").serialize();
or simply
$("#formid").submit();
If you're using AngularJS, any <form> tags inside your ng-app are replaced at runtime with ngForm directives that are designed to be nested.
In Angular forms can be nested. This means that the outer form is valid when all of the child forms are valid as well. However, browsers do not allow nesting of <form> elements, so Angular provides the ngForm directive which behaves identically to <form> but can be nested. This allows you to have nested forms, which is very useful when using Angular validation directives in forms that are dynamically generated using the ngRepeat directive. (source)
Another way to get around this problem, if you are using some server side scripting language that allows you to manipulate the posted data, is to declare your html form like this :
<form>
<input name="a_name"/>
<input name="a_second_name"/>
<input name="subform[another_name]"/>
<input name="subform[another_second_name]"/>
</form>
If you print the posted data (I will use PHP here), you will get an array like this :
//print_r($_POST) will output :
array(
'a_name' => 'a_name_value',
'a_second_name' => 'a_second_name_value',
'subform' => array(
'another_name' => 'a_name_value',
'another_second_name' => 'another_second_name_value',
),
);
Then you can just do something like :
$my_sub_form_data = $_POST['subform'];
unset($_POST['subform']);
Your $_POST now has only your "main form" data, and your subform data is stored in another variable you can manipulate at will.
Hope this helps!
As Craig said, no.
But, regarding your comment as to why:
It might be easier to use 1 <form> with the inputs and the "Update" button, and use copy hidden inputs with the "Submit Order" button in a another <form>.
Note you are not allowed to nest FORM elements!
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/forms.html
https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/appendix/changes.html#h-A.3.9 (html4 specification notes no changes regarding nesting forms from 3.2 to 4)
https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/appendix/changes.html#h-A.1.1.12 (html4 specification notes no changes regarding nesting forms from 4.0 to 4.1)
https://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/ (html5 specification notes no changes regarding nesting forms from 4 to 5)
https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#association-of-controls-and-forms comments to "This feature allows authors to work around the lack of support for nested form elements.", but does not cite where this is specified, I think they are assuming that we should assume that it's specified in the html3 specification :)
You can also use formaction="" inside the button tag.
<button type="submit" formaction="/rmDog" method='post' id="rmDog">-</button>
This would be nested in the original form as a separate button.
A simple workaround is to use a iframe to hold the "nested" form.
Visually the form is nested but on the code side its in a separate html file altogether.
Even if you could get it to work in one browser, there's no guarantee that it would work the same in all browsers. So while you might be able to get it to work some of the time, you certainly wouldn't be able to get it to work all of the time.
While I don't present a solution to nested forms (it doesn't work reliably), I do present a workaround that works for me:
Usage scenario: A superform allowing to change N items at once. It has a "Submit All" button at the bottom. Each item wants to have its own nested form with a "Submit Item # N" button. But can't...
In this case, one can actually use a single form, and then have the name of the buttons be submit_1..submit_N and submitAll and handle it servers-side, by only looking at params ending in _1 if the name of the button was submit_1.
<form>
<div id="item1">
<input type="text" name="foo_1" value="23">
<input type="submit" name="submit_1" value="Submit Item #1">
</div>
<div id="item2">
<input type="text" name="foo_2" value="33">
<input type="submit" name="submit_2" value="Submit Item #2">
</div>
<input type="submit" name="submitAll" value="Submit All Items">
</form>
Ok, so not much of an invention, but it does the job.
Use empty form tag before your nested form
Tested and Worked on Firefox, Chrome
Not Tested on I.E.
<form name="mainForm" action="mainAction">
<form></form>
<form name="subForm" action="subAction">
</form>
</form>
EDIT by #adusza: As the commenters pointed out, the above code does not result in nested forms. However, if you add div elements like below, you will have subForm inside mainForm, and the first blank form will be removed.
<form name="mainForm" action="mainAction">
<div>
<form></form>
<form name="subForm" action="subAction">
</form>
</div>
</form>
Although the question is pretty old and I agree with the #everyone that nesting of form is not allowed in HTML
But this something all might want to see this
where you can hack(I'm calling it a hack since I'm sure this ain't legitimate) html to allow browser to have nested form
<form id="form_one" action="http://apple.com">
<div>
<div>
<form id="form_two" action="/">
<!-- DUMMY FORM TO ALLOW BROWSER TO ACCEPT NESTED FORM -->
</form>
</div>
<br/>
<div>
<form id="form_three" action="http://www.linuxtopia.org/">
<input type='submit' value='LINUX TOPIA'/>
</form>
</div>
<br/>
<div>
<form id="form_four" action="http://bing.com">
<input type='submit' value='BING'/>
</form>
</div>
<br/>
<input type='submit' value='Apple'/>
</div>
</form>
JS FIDDLE LINK
http://jsfiddle.net/nzkEw/10/
About nesting forms: I spent 10 years one afternoon trying to debug an ajax script.
my previous answer/example didn't account for the html markup, sorry.
<form id='form_1' et al>
<input stuff>
<submit onClick='ajaxFunction(That_Puts_form_2_In_The_ajaxContainer)'>
<td id='ajaxContainer'></td>
</form>
form_2 constantly failed saying invalid form_2.
When I moved the ajaxContainer that produced form_2 <i>outside</i> of form_1, I was back in business. It the answer the question as to why one might nest forms. I mean, really, what's the ID for if not to define which form is to be used? There must be a better, slicker work around.
No you cannot have a nested form. Instead you can open up a Modal that contains form and perform Ajax form submit.
Really not possible...
I couldn't nest form tags...
However I used this code:
<form>
OTHER FORM STUFF
<div novalidate role="form" method="post" id="fake_form_id_0" data-url="YOUR_POST_URL">
THIS FORM STUFF
</div>
</form>
with {% csrf_token %} and stuff
and applied some JS
var url = $(form_id).attr("data-url");
$.ajax({
url: url,
"type": "POST",
"data": {
'csrfmiddlewaretoken': '{{ csrf_token }}',
'custom-param-attachment': 'value'
},
success: function (e, data) {
if (e.is_valid) {
DO STUFF
}
}
});
Today, I also got stuck in same issue, and resolve the issue I have added a user control and
on this control I use this code
<div class="divformTagEx">
</div>
<asp:Literal runat="server" ID="litFormTag" Visible="false">
'<div> <form style="margin-bottom: 3;" action="http://login.php" method="post" name="testformtag"></form> </div>'</asp:Literal>
and on PreRenderComplete event of the page call this method
private void InitializeJavaScript()
{
var script = new StringBuilder();
script.Append("$(document).ready(function () {");
script.Append("$('.divformTagEx').append( ");
script.Append(litFormTag.Text);
script.Append(" )");
script.Append(" });");
ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this, GetType(), "nestedFormTagEx", script.ToString(), true);
}
I believe this will help.
Before I knew I wasn't supposed to do this I had nested forms for the purpose of having multiple submit buttons. Ran that way for 18 months, thousands of signup transactions, no one called us about any difficulties.
Nested forms gave me an ID to parse for the correct action to take. Didn't break 'til I tried to attach a field to one of the buttons and Validate complained. Wasn't a big deal to untangle it--I used an explicit stringify on the outer form so it didn't matter the submit and form didn't match. Yeah, yeah, should've taken the buttons from a submit to an onclick.
Point is there are circumstances where it's not entirely broken. But "not entirely broken" is perhaps too low a standard to shoot for :-)
[see thecode.. code format below ]2simple trick
simply dont use other inside another form tag, please use the same elements without using form tag.
see example below
"" dont use another form // just recall the enter image description hereelement in it""
I have this code, I use formaction attribute to return in home.html
but it's not working because of required attribute.
<form action="post">
Name:
<input type="text" name="name" required>
<br>
Email:
<input type="email" name="name" required>
<button name="Send" id="send">Send</button>
<button name="Return" id="return" formaction="home.html">Return</button>
</form>
The formaction attribute working fine. I can use the Network tab in my browser's developer tools to observe that when I click Return (in the live demo in your question) the form is submitted to home.html.
The required fields are still required (so I have to fill them in before that happens), but that is to be expected.
It sounds like your goal is to provide an exception and not need the user to enter any data when submitting the form to Return.
That isn't possible without adding a bunch of JS but you're approaching the problem from the wrong angle in the first place.
It looks like you want something for the user to click on that will abort filling in the form and just go to a different URL. There's no data submission involved.
That isn't a job for a submit button.
Use a link instead.
Return
You can apply CSS if you want it to look like a button, but I wouldn't recommend it. The visual appearance of the button implies that the form data will be sent somewhere, and that isn't what you are doing.
You should refer to homepage at the form tag
<form action="home.html" method="POST">
and for the submit
<input type="button" name="Return" id="return">
How do I send an email with specified initial values for the headers subject and message from a button in html, such as this
<form method="post" action="mailto:email.com?subject=subject&message=message">
where subject and message are values fetched from a form?
You can use mailto, here is the HTML code:
<a href="mailto:EMAILADDRESS">
Replace EMAILADDRESS with your email.
This method doesn't seem to work in my browser, and looking around indicates that the whole subject of specifying headers to a mailto link/action is sparsely supported, but maybe this can help...
HTML:
<form id="fr1">
<input type="text" id="tb1" />
<input type="text" id="tb2" />
<input type="button" id="bt1" value="click" />
</form>
JavaScript (with jQuery):
$(document).ready(function() {
$('#bt1').click(function() {
$('#fr1').attr('action',
'mailto:test#test.com?subject=' +
$('#tb1').val() + '&body=' + $('#tb2').val());
$('#fr1').submit();
});
});
Notice what I'm doing here. The form itself has no action associated with it. And the submit button isn't really a submit type, it's just a button type. Using JavaScript, I'm binding to that button's click event, setting the form's action attribute, and then submitting the form.
It's working in so much as it submits the form to a mailto action (my default mail program pops up and opens a new message to the specified address), but for me (Safari, Mail.app) it's not actually specifying the Subject or Body in the resulting message.
HTML isn't really a very good medium for doing this, as I'm sure others are pointing out while I type this. It's possible that this may work in some browsers and/or some mail clients. However, it's really not even a safe assumption anymore that users will have a fat mail client these days. I can't remember the last time I opened mine. HTML's mailto is a bit of legacy functionality and, these days, it's really just as well that you perform the mail action on the server-side if possible.
As David notes, his suggestion does not actually fulfill the OP's request, which was an email with subject and message. It doesn't work because most, maybe all, combinations of browsers plus e-mail clients do not accept the subject and body attributes of the mailto: URI when supplied as a <form>'s action.
But here's a working example:
HTML (with Bootstrap styles):
<p><input id="subject" type="text" placeholder="type your subject here"
class="form-control"></p>
<p><input id="message" type="text" placeholder="type your message here"
class="form-control"></p>
<p><a id="mail-link" class="btn btn-primary">Create email</a></p>
JavaScript (with jQuery):
<script type="text/javascript">
function loadEvents() {
var mailString;
function updateMailString() {
mailString = '?subject=' + encodeURIComponent($('#subject').val())
+ '&body=' + encodeURIComponent($('#message').val());
$('#mail-link').attr('href', 'mailto:person#email.com' + mailString);
}
$( "#subject" ).focusout(function() { updateMailString(); });
$( "#message" ).focusout(function() { updateMailString(); });
updateMailString();
}
</script>
Notes:
The <form> element with associated action attribute is not used.
The <input> element of type button is also not used.
<a> styled as a button (here using Bootstrap) replaces <input type="button">
focusout() with updateMailString() is necessary because the <a> tag's href attribute does not automatically update when the input fields' values change.
updateMailString() is also called when document is loaded in case the input fields are prepopulated.
Also encodeURIComponent() is used to get characters such as the quotation mark (") across to Outlook.
In this approach, the mailto: URI is supplied (with subject and body attributes) in an a element's href tag. This works in all combinations of browsers and e-mail clients I have tested, which are recent (2015) versions of:
Browsers: Firefox/Win&OSX, Chrome/Win&OSX, IE/Win, Safari/OSX&iOS, Opera/OSX
E-mail clients: Outlook/Win, Mail.app/OSX&iOS, Sparrow/OSX
Bonus tip: In my use cases, I add some contextual text to the e-mail body. More often than not, I want that text to contain line breaks. %0D%0A (carriage return and linefeed) works in my tests.
I couldn't ever find an answer that really satisfied the original question, so I put together a simple free service (PostMail) that allows you to make a standard HTTP POST request to send an email. When you sign up, it provides you with code that you can copy & paste into your website. In this case, you can simply use a form post:
HTML:
<form action="https://postmail.invotes.com/send"
method="post" id="email_form">
<input type="text" name="subject" placeholder="Subject" />
<textarea name="text" placeholder="Message"></textarea>
<!-- replace value with your access token -->
<input type="hidden" name="access_token" value="{your access token}" />
<input type="hidden" name="success_url"
value=".?message=Email+Successfully+Sent%21&isError=0" />
<input type="hidden" name="error_url"
value=".?message=Email+could+not+be+sent.&isError=1" />
<input id="submit_form" type="submit" value="Send" />
</form>
Again, in full disclosure, I created this service because I could not find a suitable answer.
You can not directly send an email with a HTML form. You can however send the form to your web server and then generate the email with a server side program written in e.g. PHP.
The other solution is to create a link as you did with the "mailto:". This will open the local email program from the user. And he/she can then send the pre-populated email.
When you decided how you wanted to do it you can ask another (more specific) question on this site. (Or you can search for a solution somewhere on the internet.)
#user544079
Even though it is very old and irrelevant now, I am replying to help people like me!
it should be like this:
<form method="post" action="mailto:$emailID?subject=$MySubject &message= $MyMessageText">
Here
$emailID,
$MySubject,
$MyMessageText are variables which you assign from a FORM or a DATABASE Table or just you can assign values in your code itself. Alternatively you can put the code like this (normally it is not used):
<form method="post" action="mailto:admin#website.com?subject=New Registration Alert &message= New Registration requires your approval">
You can use an anchor to attempt to open the user's default mail client, prepopulated, with mailto:, but you cannot send the actual email. *Apparently it is possible to do this with a form action as well, but browser support is varied and unreliable, so I do not suggest it.
HTML cannot send mail, you need to use a server side language like php, which is another topic. There are plently of good resources on how to do this here on SO or elsewhere on the internet.
If you are using php, I see SwiftMailer suggested quite a bit.
<form action="mailto:someone#example.com" method="post" enctype="text/plain">
Name:<br>
<input type="text" name="name"><br>
E-mail:<br>
<input type="text" name="mail"><br>
Comment:<br>
<input type="text" name="comment" size="50"><br><br>
<input type="submit" value="Send">
<input type="reset" value="Reset">
I was looking for a fix to stop IE refreshing the page instead of submitting my single line form, when a user hits enter instead of clicking go.
I found this solution, which works well, but I was wondering if anyone could explain why it works?
The solution I used is to add a hidden text input within the form tags, like this
`<form name="SearchForm" id="SearchForm" method="get" action="">
/*This is the hidden text input*/
<input type="text" style="visibility:hidden;display:none;" name="ieSearchEnter">
</input>
<fieldset>
<span><input type="text" name="Search" id="Search"/></span>
<div class="field actions">
<input type="submit" name="Go" id="Go" class="submit" value="Go"/>
</div>
</fieldset>
</form>`
which i found here.
Thanks!
Are you really setting the ACTION value to an empty string, or did you just do that for your code sample?
I don't think IE is really "refreshing the page"-- I think it's automatically submitting your form.
Here's a simple test page: http://www.enhanceie.com/sandbox/simpleform.asp. When you hit enter, you'll see that the URL is updated to pass the user's value.
IIRC, there is code in IE's form-handling that says that if you have form containing a single test field, then hitting ENTER will submit that form. In your workaround, you've added an additional text field so that optimization is not applied.
I think maybe your server-side code is REQUIRING that the form submission contains "Go=Go" or it ignores the submitted value (Search=Whatevertheuserhadtyped) and simply re-displays the form. If you change the server-side script such that it does not require Go=Go, then your problem should go away.