Submit two forms with one button

Question

I have HTML two forms, one that submits data upon entry to a database using PHP, the other directs the user to a paypal payment page, my problem is that the user would have to submit both forms which of course I do not want them to have to do. Is there anyway to use one submit button for two forms?

(Javascript is welcome)

Answer 1

You should be able to do this with JavaScript:

<input type="button" value="Click Me!" onclick="submitForms()" />

If your forms have IDs:

submitForms = function(){
    document.getElementById("form1").submit();
    document.getElementById("form2").submit();
}

If your forms don't have IDs but have names:

submitForms = function(){
    document.forms["form1"].submit();
    document.forms["form2"].submit();
}

Answer 2

You can submit the first form using AJAX, otherwise the submission of one will prevent the other from being submitted.

Answer 3

The currently chosen best answer is too fuzzy to be reliable.

This feels to me like a fairly safe way to do it:

(Javascript: using jQuery to write it simpler)

$('#form1').submit(doubleSubmit);

function doubleSubmit(e1) {
    e1.preventDefault();
    e1.stopPropagation();
    var post_form1 = $.post($(this).action, $(this).serialize());

    post_form1.done(function(result) {
            // would be nice to show some feedback about the first result here
            $('#form2').submit();
        });
};

Post the first form without changing page, wait for the process to complete. Then post the second form. The second post will change the page, but you could want to have some similar code also for the second form, getting a second deferred object (post_form2?).

I didn't test the code, though.

Answer 4

A form submission causes the page to navigate away to the action of the form. So, you cannot submit both forms in the traditional way. If you try to do so with JavaScript by calling form.submit() on each form in succession, each request will be aborted except for the last submission. So, you need to submit the first form asynchronously via JavaScript:

var f = document.forms.updateDB;
var postData = [];
for (var i = 0; i < f.elements.length; i++) {
    postData.push(f.elements[i].name + "=" + f.elements[i].value);
}
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("POST", "mypage.php", true);
xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
xhr.send(postData.join("&"));

document.forms.payPal.submit();

Answer 5

In Chrome and IE9 (and I'm guessing all other browsers too) only the latter will generate a socket connect, the first one will be discarded. (The browser detects this as both requests are sent within one JavaScript "timeslice" in your code above, and discards all but the last request.)

If you instead have some event callback do the second submission (but before the reply is received), the socket of the first request will be cancelled. This is definitely nothing to recommend as the server in that case may well have handled your first request, but you will never know for sure.

I recommend you use/generate a single request which you can transact server-side.

Answer 6

If you have a regular submit button, you could add an onclick event to it that does the follow:

document.getElementById('otherForm').submit();