I really liked this answer by superluminary and especially the way he wrapped is solution in a jQuery plugin. So thanks to superluminary for a very useful answer. In my case, though, I wanted a plugin that would allow me to define the success and error event handlers by means of options when the plugin is initialized.
So here is what I came up with:
;(function(defaults, $, undefined) {
var getSubmitHandler = function(onsubmit, success, error) {
return function(event) {
if (typeof onsubmit === 'function') {
onsubmit.call(this, event);
}
var form = $(this);
$.ajax({
type: form.attr('method'),
url: form.attr('action'),
data: form.serialize()
}).done(function() {
if (typeof success === 'function') {
success.apply(this, arguments);
}
}).fail(function() {
if (typeof error === 'function') {
error.apply(this, arguments);
}
});
event.preventDefault();
};
};
$.fn.extend({
// Usage:
// jQuery(selector).ajaxForm({
// onsubmit:function() {},
// success:function() {},
// error: function() {}
// });
ajaxForm : function(options) {
options = $.extend({}, defaults, options);
return $(this).each(function() {
$(this).submit(getSubmitHandler(options['onsubmit'], options['success'], options['error']));
});
}
});
})({}, jQuery);
This plugin allows me to very easily "ajaxify" html forms on the page and provide onsubmit, success and error event handlers for implementing feedback to the user of the status of the form submit. This allowed the plugin to be used as follows:
$('form').ajaxForm({
onsubmit: function(event) {
// User submitted the form
},
success: function(data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
// The form was successfully submitted
},
error: function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
// The submit action failed
}
});
Note that the success and error event handlers receive the same arguments that you would receive from the corresponding events of the jQuery ajax method.