m3rajk — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 20:32:37 +0000

why are you using javascript validation? it is extremely easy to bypasss. and is nothing in the way of security.

if you do it as a precusor to be fast that's ok, but you should have a server side validation before any insertions, not a client side

jumpyg — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 17:02:37 +0000

Thanks for all the help! Abhishek, your advice really helped. Here is the solution I came up with:

&lt;script language="JavaScript"&gt;<!--
function checkData () 
/* make sure search form doesn't contain default text and isn't empty */
{
  var input = document.getElementById("spq").value;

  if (input == "Search site" || input == "") 
  {
    alert("Please enter a search string.");
    document.getElementById("spq").focus();
    return false; 
  }

  /* everything is okay, so return true */
  return true;
}
//-->
&lt;/script&gt;

<form method="get" action="http://search.atomz.com/search/" 
name="search_form" class="nopad" onsubmit="return checkData()">

<input type="text" value="Search site" size="12" maxlength="100" 
name="sp-q" id="spq" class="thin" onfocus="javascript:if(this.value=='Search 
site') {this.value='';}">

&nbsp;<input type="image" src="images/go_button.gif" align="top" width="25" 
height="20" border="0" alt="Submit Search">

</form>

Suzanne — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 07:21:11 +0000

Here's the thing -- Atomz doesn't care about blanks, why should you?

Validate the entry, sure. But if you use the bit I gave you instead of all this, it will automatically remove "Search site" when the field is focussed so you don't get false returns for those words.

Abhishek Reddy — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 03:43:37 +0000

Can you set an id for the input element? Something like this might work:

var input = document.getElementById("spq").value;
  ...
  <input ... id="spq">

jumpyg — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 20:47:54 +0000

Hi Suzanne.

The search box starts off with "Search site" in it. The if statement in the form code:
onfocus="javascript:if(this.value=='Search site') {this.value='';}">'
is used so that when a user clicks in the search box, the "Search site" text disappears and they can enter their search. I could do it your way, but I want that text to disappear entirely. That part works okay, and I've had that in there for some time.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by an extra return in the onSubmit. Do you mean that I can have onsubmit="checkData()" instead of onsubmit="return checkData()" ? I did take out the return, but I'm still not getting it to work.

As an experiment, I put an alert in the checkData() function to see if that is executing:

&lt;script language="JavaScript"&gt;<!--
function checkData () {
/* make sure search form doesn't contain default text and isn't empty */

var input = document.search_form.sp-q.value;
alert("in checkdata");
if (input == "Search site" || input == "") 
{
  alert("Please enter a search string.")
  input.focus()
  return false; 
}

/* everything is okay, so return true */
return true;
}
//-->
&lt;/script&gt;

'
When the alert is right after the var input definition, it does NOT bring up the dialog box. However, if I put the alert right before the var input definition, the alert comes up. I'm thinking it does not like the hyphen in the form input name.

Suzanne — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 18:05:09 +0000

onfocus="select()" value="Search site"

Why do you have another if statement in the form code? And an extra return in the onsubmit?