Submit A Form Without Page Refresh using jQuery

Question

I want to submit a form without page refresh using jQuery. I found some examples online, like this one: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/submit-a-form-without-page-refresh-using-jquery/

but the problem is they have hard-coded form fields:

  <div id="contact_form">
  <form name="contact" action="">
    <fieldset>
      <label for="name" id="name_label">Name</label>
      <input type="text" name="name" id="name" size="30" value="" class="text-input" />
      <label class="error" for="name" id="name_error">This field is required.</label>

      <label for="email" id="email_label">Return Email</label>
      <input type="text" name="email" id="email" size="30" value="" class="text-input" />
      <label class="error" for="email" id="email_error">This field is required.</label>

      <label for="phone" id="phone_label">Return Phone</label>
      <input type="text" name="phone" id="phone" size="30" value="" class="text-input" />
      <label class="error" for="phone" id="phone_error">This field is required.</label>

        <br />
      <input type="submit" name="submit" class="button" id="submit_btn" value="Send" />
    </fieldset>
  </form>
  </div>

And the javascript:

  var dataString = 'name='+ name + '&email=' + email + '&phone=' + phone;
  //alert (dataString);return false;
  $.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "bin/process.php",
    data: dataString,
    success: function() {
      $('#contact_form').html("<div id='message'></div>");
      $('#message').html("<h2>Contact Form Submitted!</h2>")
      .append("<p>We will be in touch soon.</p>")
      .hide()
      .fadeIn(1500, function() {
        $('#message').append("<img id='checkmark' src='images/check.png' />");
      });
    }
  });
  return false;

So in the example above, the dataString is created from hard-coded form fields. My form is dynamic so I don't know the name of input fields it has.

Note: Although the form fields are dynamic, the form name is hard-coded, so I guess one option is to go through child nodes and parse the values. But I was wondering if there is an easier way.

Answer 1

Caner, I fear since your form is dynamic there isn't an easier way. You need to go through your form using code like such:

var message = "";
$("#formID input").each(function() {
    message += $(this).attr("name");
});

Such a code will get the name of each input in the form and concatenate it to a string called message. You can be more specific than I was in this case, but you should get the basic idea and use this code to fit it to your needs.

Answer 2

data: $("#contact_form form").serializeArray() should do it.