Implicit form submission doesn't work always
Written by Stefan Judis
- Published at
- Updated at
- Reading time
- 1min
This post is part of my Today I learned series in which I share all my web development learnings.
If a form submits by pressing ENTER
on a focused input field this is an implicit form submission.
But does every HTML form submit on ENTER
?
HTML forms implicitly submit under two conditions:
- the form has a submit button.
- the form has only one input element.
So let me share a quick example:
<form onsubmit="alert(1)">
<!-- this will alert if you press `ENTER` while "foo" is focused -->
<input name="foo" />
</form>
<form onsubmit="alert(2)">
<!-- this won't -->
<input name="foo" />
<input name="bar" />
</form>
Tip: if you want to work around this behavior, you can always add a hidden submit button. And if you want to read the spec defining form submissions, here we go.
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