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JavaScript

A5.form.submit Method

Do not use this method to submit a UX or Grid component. Use the {dialog.object}.submit and Grid Component submit methods instead.

Syntax

A5.form.submit(action, formID, url [, additionalParameters]);

Arguments

actionstring

The name of the action to invoke in the .a5w page that handles the callback. See "Action parameter" section below.

formIDstring

Thh ID of the form.

urlstring

The URL of the .a5w page that will handle the callback.

additionalParametersstring

See "Optional Fourth Parameter" below.

Description

This is the primary function to invoke to submit data from the page back to the server. This action is similar to pressing a submit button on a traditional form, but has additional functionality.

Discussion

There are three required parameters

  • action
  • formID
  • url

Action Parameter

The action has a number of predefined values. All of the actions submit all of the input.

values in controls inside of the specified form element as a POST. The action also submits additional values on every submit.

__FormAction

This is a variable submitted to define the action taken. Any submit action with place "submit" in this value. Any other action will place the action name, such as 'initialize' in the value.

__FormID

This is the ID of the firm submitted and matched the 'formID' input parameter.

a5DirtyRegions

This is the ID of any forms submitted that have 'dirty' values. This will almost always be the same as '__FormID'

a5RegionsDirtyValues

This is a list of controls that were found to be 'dirty'. This is useful for updates to create update actions to only update field values that have changed.

Submit Actions

submit:all

This action submits all of the original values in every field prefaced with the pointer 'old.' as well as the current values in every control. The 'old' values can be used in UPDATE statements and other actions if desired.

submit:dirty

This action is very similar to 'submit:all, except only 'dirty' controls are listed and submitted. Values from 'submit:all' can be evaluated on the callback page to get the same data if required.

submit:new

This action just submits all current values in the controls. It does not submit the 'old' values.

formID parameter

The formID input specifies the ID of the form element that is being submitted. A single page may have multiple form elements, and it is necessary to indicate which form is being submitted. This value will be in the submitted data as __FormID.

url Parameter
This is the URL of the page to call on submit.  This is equivalent to the 'action' attribute of a form element which directs the submit action to open a particular page.  This page or "callback" page contains xbasic code to evaluate and manipulate the data submitted.  If the data is sent to the page with  A5.form.submit(), the page code must test the value in __FormAction to determine what action was invoked.  This would be a typical code snippet on the callback page to evaluate what code actions to take after submit.
dim __formAction as c = default ""
dim action as c
 
if __formAction = "Submit" then 
    if onFormValidate(local_variables())
        afterFormValidate(local_variables())
    end if
else if __formAction = "Initialize" then 
    onFormInitialize(local_variables())
end if
Note that a second possible input variable ('action') to define an action was specified.  This will be examined in A5.ajax.callback().
Optional Fourth Parameter
In some cases, it is desirable to submit values that are not in controls within the specified form.  These could be controls in another form element, a fixed value based on some condition, or any other value available to the page.  These are the values that would be seen after the "?" in a URL, commonly referred to as the GET or query string. This parameter should have the same syntax as any GET.
For example, if the submit action is submitting to 'calculatesale.a5w' and you want to send additional parameters of 'user=Joe' and 'date=20081010' a normal form element  could be:
<form action="calculatesale.a5w.a5w?user=Joe&date=20081010" method="post"  name="form1" id="form1">
When using the function A5.form.submit() to submit all values from the form element 'form1', the function syntax would be:
A5.form.submit('submit:new','form1','calculatesale.a5w','user=Joe&date=20081010')
If you fail to call the A5.form.prepare function first, A5.form.submit will still submit the data in the form. It won't, however, submit the original values in each control on the form in this case.