How to force a html5 form validation without submitting it via jQuery

I have this form in my app and I will submit it via AJAX, but I want to use HTML5 for client-side validation. So I want to be able to force the form validation, perhaps via jQuery.

I want to trigger the validation without submitting the form. Is it possible?

To check whether a certain field is valid, use:

$('#myField')[0].checkValidity(); // returns true|false

To check if the form is valid, use:

$('#myForm')[0].checkValidity(); // returns true|false

If you want to display the native error messages that some browsers have (such as Chrome), unfortunately the only way to do that is by submitting the form, like this:

var $myForm = $('#myForm');

if (!$myForm[0].checkValidity()) {
    // If the form is invalid, submit it. The form won't actually submit;
    // this will just cause the browser to display the native HTML5 error messages.
    $myForm.find(':submit').click();
}

Keep in mind that, HTML5 validation is not supported in all browsers till now.

below code works for me,

$("#btn").click(function () {

    if ($("#frm")[0].checkValidity())
        alert('sucess');
    else
        //Validate Form
        $("#frm")[0].reportValidity()

});

I found this solution to work for me. Just call a javascript function like this:

action="javascript:myFunction();"

Then you have the html5 validation... really simple :-)

    if $("form")[0].checkValidity()
      $.ajax(
        url: "url"
        type: "post"
        data: {
         
        }
        dataType: "json"
        success: (data) ->
          
      )
    else
      #important
      $("form")[0].reportValidity()

from: html5 form validation

Here is a more general way that is a bit cleaner:

Create your form like this (can be a dummy form that does nothing):

<form class="validateDontSubmit">
...

Bind all forms that you dont really want to submit:

$(document).on('submit','.validateDontSubmit',function (e) {
	//prevent the form from doing a submit
	e.preventDefault();
	return false;
})

Now lets say you have an <a> (within the <form>) that on click you want to validate the form:

$('#myLink').click(function(e){
  //Leverage the HTML5 validation w/ ajax. Have to submit to get em. Wont actually submit cuz form
  //has .validateDontSubmit class
  var $theForm = $(this).closest('form');
  //Some browsers don't implement checkValidity
  if (( typeof($theForm[0].checkValidity) == "function" ) && !$theForm[0].checkValidity()) {
     return;
  }

  //if you've gotten here - play on playa'
});

Few notes here:

• I have noticed that you don't have to actually submit the form for validation to occur - the call to checkValidity() is enough (at least in chrome). If others could add comments with testing this theory on other browsers I'll update this answer.
• The thing that triggers the validation does not have to be within the <form>. This was just a clean and flexible way to have a general purpose solution..

May be late to the party but yet somehow I found this question while trying to solve similar problem. As no code from this page worked for me, meanwhile I came up with solution that works as specified.

Problem is when your <form> DOM contain single <button> element, once fired, that <button> will automatically sumbit form. If you play with AJAX, You probably need to prevent default action. But there is a catch: If you just do so, You will also prevent basic HTML5 validation. Therefore, it is good call to prevent defaults on that button only if the form is valid. Otherwise, HTML5 validation will protect You from submitting. jQuery checkValidity() will help with this:

jQuery:

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('#buttonID').on('click', function(event) {
    var isvalidate = $("#formID")[0].checkValidity();
    if (isvalidate) {
      event.preventDefault();
      // HERE YOU CAN PUT YOUR AJAX CALL
    }
  });
});

Code described above will allow You to use basic HTML5 validation (with type and pattern matching) WITHOUT submitting form.

You speak of two different things "HTML5 validation" and validation of HTML form using javascript/jquery.

HTML5 "has" built-in options for validating a form. Such as using "required" attribute on a field, which could (based on browser implementation) fail form submission without using javascript/jquery.

With javascrip/jquery you can do something like this

$('your_form_id').bind('submit', function() {
   // validate your form here
   return (valid) ? true : false;
});

var $myForm = $('#myForm ');
if (!$myForm[0].checkValidity()) {
  $('<input type="submit">').hide().appendTo($myForm).click().remove();
}

2022 vanilla JS solution

Pure JavaScript has all the functions you need for this. I know the question was about jQuery, but even the answers with jQuery use these functions, which are checkValidity() and reportValidity().

Test entire form

let form = document.getElementById('formId');
// Eventlistener can be another event and on another DOM object this is just an example
form.addEventListener('submit', function (event) {
    // Only needed if event is submit, otherwise this line can be skipped 
    event.preventDefault();

    // This is the important part, test if form is valid
    if (form.checkValidity() === false){
        // This is the magic function that displays the validation errors to the user
        form.reportValidity();   
        return; 
    }

    // Code if all fields are valid; continue form submit or make Ajax call.
})

Test specific field

checkValidity() and reportValidity() can not only be used on the form, but also on specific fields. No need to create a form or a dummy submit button if not needed.

// Get field of interest
let inputElement = document.querySelector("[name='" + inputName + "']");
// Check if the element is valid
if (inputElement.checkValidity() === false){
    // If not, show the errors to the user
    inputElement.reportValidity();
    return;
}

// Nothing? Great, continue to the Ajax call or whatever

This has to be in a function called by an event listener to make sense, obviously.

To check all the required fields of form without using submit button you can use below function.

You have to assign required attribute to the controls.

  $("#btnSave").click(function () {
    $(":input[required]").each(function () {                     
        var myForm = $('#form1');
        if (!$myForm[0].checkValidity()) 
          {                
            $(myForm).submit();              
          }
        });
  });

You don't need jQuery to achieve this. In your form add:

onsubmit="return buttonSubmit(this)

or in JavaScript:

myform.setAttribute("onsubmit", "return buttonSubmit(this)");

In your buttonSubmit function (or whatver you call it), you can submit the form using AJAX. buttonSubmit will only get called if your form is validated in HTML5.

In case this helps anyone, here is my buttonSubmit function:

function buttonSubmit(e)
{
	var ajax;
    var formData = new FormData();
	for (i = 0; i < e.elements.length; i++)
    {
    	if (e.elements[i].type == "submit")
    	{
    		if (submitvalue == e.elements[i].value)
    		{
	    		submit = e.elements[i];
	    		submit.disabled = true;
	    	}
	    }
	    else if (e.elements[i].type == "radio")
	    {
	    	if (e.elements[i].checked)
	    		formData.append(e.elements[i].name, e.elements[i].value);
	    }
    	else
    		formData.append(e.elements[i].name, e.elements[i].value);
    }
    formData.append("javascript", "javascript");
    var action = e.action;
    status = action.split('/').reverse()[0] + "-status";
    ajax = new XMLHttpRequest();
    ajax.addEventListener("load", manageLoad, false);
    ajax.addEventListener("error", manageError, false);
    ajax.open("POST", action);
    ajax.send(formData);
    return false;
}

Some of my forms contain multiple submit buttons, hence this line if (submitvalue == e.elements[i].value). I set the value of submitvalue using a click event.

This way works well for me:

1. Add onSubmit attribute in your form, don't forget to include return in the value.

    <form id='frm-contact' method='POST' action='' onSubmit="return contact()">
   

2. Define the function.

    function contact(params) {
    	$.ajax({
    		url: 'sendmail.php',
    		type: "POST",
    		dataType: "json",
    		timeout: 5000,
    		data: { params:params },
    		success: function (data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
                // callback
    		},
    		error: function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
    			console.log(jqXHR.responseText);
    		}
    	});
   
    	return false;
    }
   

I had a rather complex situation, where I needed multiple submit buttons to process different things. For example, Save and Delete.

The basis was that it was also unobtrusive, so I couldn't just make it a normal button. But also wanted to utilize html5 validation.

As well the submit event was overridden in case the user pressed enter to trigger the expected default submission; in this example save.

Here is the efforts of the processing of the form to still work with/without javascript and with html5 validation, with both submit and click events.

> jsFiddle Demo - HTML5 validation with submit and click overrides

xHTML

<form>
    <input type="text" required="required" value="" placeholder="test" />
    <button type="submit" name="save">Save</button>
    <button type="submit" name="delete">Delete</button>
</form>

JavaScript

//wrap our script in an annonymous function so that it can not be affected by other scripts and does not interact with other scripts
//ensures jQuery is the only thing declared as $
(function($){
    var isValid = null;
    var form = $('form');
    var submitButton = form.find('button[type="submit"]')
    var saveButton = submitButton.filter('[name="save"]');
    var deleteButton = submitButton.filter('[name="delete"]');

    //submit form behavior
    var submitForm = function(e){
        console.log('form submit');
        //prevent form from submitting valid or invalid
        e.preventDefault();
        //user clicked and the form was not valid
        if(isValid === false){
            isValid = null;
            return false;
        }
        //user pressed enter, process as if they clicked save instead
        saveButton.trigger('click');
    };

    //override submit button behavior
    var submitClick = function(e){
        //Test form validitiy (HTML5) and store it in a global variable so both functions can use it
        isValid = form[0].checkValidity();
        if(false === isValid){
            //allow the browser's default submit event behavior 
            return true;
        }
        //prevent default behavior
        e.preventDefault();
        //additional processing - $.ajax() etc
        //.........
        alert('Success');
    };
    
    //override submit form event
    form.submit(submitForm);
    
    //override submit button click event
    submitButton.click(submitClick);
})(jQuery);

The caveat to using Javascript is that the browser's default onclick must propagate to the submit event MUST occur in order to display the error messages without supporting each browser in your code. Otherwise if the click event is overridden with event.preventDefault() or return false it will never propagate to the browser's submit event.

The thing to point out is that in some browsers will not trigger the form submit when the user presses enter, instead it will trigger the first submit button in the form. Hence there is a console.log('form submit') to show that it does not trigger.

You can do it without submitting the form.

For example, if the form submit button with id "search" is in the other form . You can call click event on that submit button and call ev.preventDefault after that. For my case I validate form B from Form A submission. Like this

function validateFormB(ev){ // DOM Event object
  //search is in Form A
  $("#search").click();
  ev.preventDefault();
  //Form B validation from here on
}

$("#form").submit(function() { $("#saveButton").attr("disabled", true); });

not a best answer but works for me.

I know this has already been answered, but I have another possible solution.

If using jquery, you can do this.

First create a couple of extensions on jquery so you can resuse these as needed.

$.extend({
    bypassDefaultSubmit: function (formName, newSubmitMethod) {
        $('#'+formName).submit(function (event) {
            newSubmitMethod();
            event.preventDefault();
        }
    }
});

Next do something like this where you want to use it.

<script type="text/javascript">
    /*if you want to validate the form on a submit call, 
      and you never want the form to be submitted via
      a normal submit operation, or maybe you want handle it.
    */
    $(function () {
        $.bypassDefaultSubmit('form1', submit);
    });
    function submit(){ 
        //do something, or nothing if you just want the validation
    }

</script>

$(document).on("submit", false);

submitButton.click(function(e) {
	if (form.checkValidity()) {
		form.submit();
	}
});

This worked form me to display the native HTML 5 error messages with form validation.

<button id="btnRegister" class="btn btn-success btn btn-lg" type="submit"> Register </button>



$('#RegForm').on('submit', function () 
{

if (this.checkValidity() == false) 
{

 // if form is not valid show native error messages 

return false;

}
else
{

 // if form is valid , show please wait message and disable the button
             
 $("#btnRegister").html("<i class='fa fa-spinner fa-spin'></i> Please Wait...");

 $(this).find(':submit').attr('disabled', 'disabled');

}


});

Note: RegForm is the form id.

Reference

Hope helps someone.

This is a pretty straight forward way of having HTML5 perform validation for any form, while still having modern JS control over the form. The only caveat is the submit button must be inside the <form>.

html

<form id="newUserForm" name="create">
Email<input type="email" name="username" id="username" size="25" required>
Phone<input type="tel" id="phone" name="phone" pattern="(?:\(\d{3}\)|\d{3})[- ]?\d{3}[- ]?\d{4}" size="12" maxlength="12" required>
<input id="submit" type="submit" value="Create Account" >
</form>

js

// bind in ready() function
jQuery( "#submit" ).click( newAcctSubmit );

function newAcctSubmit()
{
  var myForm = jQuery( "#newUserForm" );

  // html 5 is doing the form validation for us,
  // so no need here (but backend will need to still for security)
  if ( ! myForm[0].checkValidity() )
  {
	// bonk! failed to validate, so return true which lets the
	// browser show native validation messages to the user
	return true;
  }

  // post form with jQuery or whatever you want to do with a valid form!
  var formVars = myForm.serialize();
  etc...
}

I think the best approach

will be using jQuery Validation plugin which uses best practice for form validation and it also has good browser support. So you don't need to worry about browser compatibility issues.

And we can use jQuery validation valid() function which checks whether the selected form is valid or whether all selected elements are valid without submitting the form.

<form id="myform">
   <input type="text" name="name" required>
   <br>
   <button type="button">Validate!</button>
</form>
<script>
  var form = $( "#myform" );
  form.validate();
  $( "button" ).click(function() {
    console.log( "Valid: " + form.valid() );
  });
</script>

According to the question html5 validity should be validate able using jQuery at first and in most of the answer this is not happening and the reason for this is as following:

while validating using html5 form's default function

checkValidity();// returns true/false

we need to understand that jQuery returns object array, while selecting like this

$("#myForm")

therefore, you need to specify the first index to make checkValidity() function work

$('#myForm')[0].checkValidity()

here is the complete solution:

<button type="button" name="button" onclick="saveData()">Save</button>

function saveData()
{
	if($('#myForm')[0].checkValidity()){
		$.ajax({
		  type: "POST",
		  url: "save.php",
		  data: data,
		  success: function(resp){console.log("Response: "+resp);}
		});
	}
}