Chapter 18: Forms

Attribute	Description
accept-charset	Specifies the character encodings that are to be used for the form submission.
action	Specifies where to send the form-data when a form is submitted.
autocomplete	Specifies whether a form should have autocomplete on or off.
enctype	Specifies how the form-data should be encoded when submitting it to the server (only for method=”post”).
method	Specifies the HTTP method to use when sending form-data (POST or GET).
name	Specifies the name of a form.
novalidate	Specifies that the form should not be validated when submitted.
target	Specifies where to display the response that is received after submitting the form.

In order to group input elements and submit data, HTML uses a form element to encapsulate input and submission
elements. These forms handle sending the data in the specified method to a page handled by a server or handler.
This topic explains and demonstrates the usage of HTML forms in collecting and submitting input data.

Submitting

The Action Attribute

The action attribute defines the action to be performed when the form is submitted, which usually leads to a script
that collects the information submitted and works with it. if you leave it blank, it will send it to the same file

<form action="action.php">

The Method Attribute

The method attribute is used to define the HTTP method of the form which is either GET or POST.

<form action="action.php" method="get">
<form action="action.php" method="post">

The GET method is mostly used to get data, for example to receive a post by its ID or name, or to submit a search
query. The GET method will append the form data to the URL specified in the action attribute.

www.example.com/action.php?firstname=Mickey&lastname=Mouse

The POST method is used when submitting data to a script. The POST method does not append the form data to
the action URL but sends using the request body.

To submit the data from the form correctly, a name attribute name must be specified.
As an example let’s send the value of the field and set its name to lastname:

<input type="text" name="lastname" value="Mouse">

More attributes

<form action="action.php" method="post" target="_blank" accept-charset="UTF-8"
enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" autocomplete="off" novalidate>
</form>

Target attribute in form tag

The target attribute specifies a name or a keyword that indicates where to display the response that is received
after submitting the form.

The target attribute defines a name of, or keyword for, a browsing context (e.g. tab, window, or inline frame).

From Tag with a target attribute:

<form target="_blank">

Attribute Values

Value	Description
_blank	The response is displayed in a new window or tab
_self	The response is displayed in the same frame (this is default)
_parent	The response is displayed in the parent frame
_top	The response is displayed in the full body of the window
framename	The response is displayed in a named iframe

Note: The target attribute was deprecated in HTML 4.01. The target attribute is supported in HTML5.

Frames and framesets are not supported in HTML5, so the _parent, _top and framename values are now
mostly used with iframes.

Uploading Files

mages and files can be uploaded/submitted to server by setting enctype attribute of form tag to multipart/form-data. enctype specifies how form data would be encoded while submitting to the server.

Example

form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" action="upload.php">
 <input type="file" name="pic" />
 <input type="submit" value="Upload" />
</form>

Grouping a few input fields

While designing a form, you might like to group a few input fields into a group to help organise the form layout.
This can be done by using the tag . Here is an example for using it.

For each fieldset, you can set a legend for the set using the tag LEGEND TEXT

Example

<form>
 <fieldset>
 <legend>1st field set:</legend>
 Field one:<br>
 <input type="text"><br>GoalKicker.com – HTML5 Notes for Professionals 56
 Field two:<br>
 <input type="text"><br>
 </fieldset><br>
 <fieldset>
 <legend>2nd field set:</legend>
 Field three:<br>
 <input type="text"><br>
 Field four:<br>
 <input type="text"><br>
 </fieldset><br>
 <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

Result

Browser Support

Chrome, IE, Edge, FireFox, Safari and Opera’s latest versions also supports the tag