Submit form and stay on same page?

When you hit on the submit button, the page is sent to the server. If you want to send it async, you can do it with ajax.

99% of the time I would use XMLHttpRequest or fetch for something like this. However, there's an alternative solution which doesn't require javascript...

You could include a hidden iframe on your page and set the target attribute of your form to point to that iframe.

<style>
  .hide { position:absolute; top:-1px; left:-1px; width:1px; height:1px; }
</style>

<iframe name="hiddenFrame" class="hide"></iframe>

<form action="receiver.pl" method="post" target="hiddenFrame">
  <input name="signed" type="checkbox">
  <input value="Save" type="submit">
</form>

There are very few scenarios where I would choose this route. Generally handling it with javascript is better because, with javascript you can...

• gracefully handle errors (e.g. retry)
• provide UI indicators (e.g. loading, processing, success, failure)
• run logic before the request is sent, or run logic after the response is received.

The HTTP/CGI way to do this would be for your program to return an HTTP status code of 204 (No Content).

The easiest answer: jQuery. Do something like this:

$(document).ready(function(){
   var $form = $('form');
   $form.submit(function(){
      $.post($(this).attr('action'), $(this).serialize(), function(response){
            // do something here on success
      },'json');
      return false;
   });
});

If you want to add content dynamically and still need it to work, and also with more than one form, you can do this:

   $('form').live('submit', function(){
      $.post($(this).attr('action'), $(this).serialize(), function(response){
            // do something here on success
      },'json');
      return false;
   });