Introduction

This tutorial aims to guide you through handling form submissions using jQuery. By the end of this tutorial, you will have learned how to:

• Capture form submission events
• Prevent default form behavior
• Execute custom functions upon form submission

Before proceeding, it would be beneficial to have a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Familiarity with jQuery is also preferred but not required.

Step-by-Step Guide

To handle form submissions with jQuery, we must first understand how to capture form submission events and prevent the form's default behavior.

When a form is submitted, the browser typically reloads the page. However, we can prevent this from happening using jQuery's event.preventDefault() method. This method, when called within an event handler, halts the execution of the default behavior.

After preventing the default form action, we can then execute our custom functions.

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to handle form submissions with jQuery:

1. First, select the form using jQuery's $ function. This function allows us to select elements on the page using CSS selectors.
2. Next, attach a submit event handler to the form using the .submit() method. This method takes a function as its argument, which will be executed when the form is submitted.
3. Inside the event handler, call event.preventDefault() to stop the form from reloading the page.
4. Write your custom code that should be executed when the form is submitted.

Code Examples

Here's a practical example:

// Select the form
$('form').submit(function(event) {
  // Prevent the form from submitting normally
  event.preventDefault();

  // Log the form data
  console.log($(this).serialize());
});

In this example, $('form') selects the form. The .submit() method attaches an event handler to the form. event.preventDefault() stops the form from submitting normally. Finally, console.log($(this).serialize()); logs the form data to the console.

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned how to handle form submissions using jQuery. You learned how to capture form submission events, prevent default form behavior, and execute custom functions upon form submission.

As next steps, consider learning more about jQuery and AJAX to send the form data to a server without reloading the page. You can find more information in the official jQuery documentation.

Practice Exercises

1. Create a form with fields for name and email. Log the form data to the console when the form is submitted.
2. Create a form with a single checkbox. Log a message to the console when the box is checked and the form is submitted.
3. Create a form with a drop-down menu. Log the selected option to the console when the form is submitted.

Solutions

$('form').submit(function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  console.log($(this).serialize());
});

$('form').submit(function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  if ($('#checkbox').is(':checked')) {
    console.log('Checkbox is checked');
  }
});

$('form').submit(function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  console.log($('#dropdown').val());
});

Remember to replace 'form', '#checkbox', and '#dropdown' with your actual form, checkbox, and drop-down menu selectors.