jquery / ajax form not passing button data - forms

Question

I thought the HTML spec stated that buttons click in a form pass their value, and button "not clicked" did not get passed. Like check boxes... I always check for the button value and sometimes I'll do different processing depending on which button was used to submit..
I have started using AJAX (specifically jquery) to submit my form data - but the button data is NEVER passed - is there something I'm missing? is there soemthing I can do to pass that data?
simple code might look like this
<form id="frmPost" method="post" action="page.php" class="bbForm" >
<input type="text" name="heading" id="heading" />
<input type="submit" name="btnA" value="Process It!" />
<input type="submit" name="btnB" value="Re-rout it somewhere Else!" />
</form>
<script>
$( function() { //once the doc has loaded
//handle the forms
$( '.bbForm' ).live( 'submit', function() { // catch the form's submit event
$.ajax({ // create an AJAX call...
data: $( this ).serialize(), // get the form data
type: $( this ).attr( 'method' ), // GET or POST
url: $( this ).attr( 'action' ), // the file to call
success: function( response ) { // on success..
$('#ui-tabs-1').html( response );
}
});
return false; // cancel original event to prevent form submitting
});
});
</script>
On the processing page - ONLY the "heading" field appears, neither the btnA or btnB regardless of whichever is clicked...
if it can't be 'fixed' can someone explain why the Ajax call doesn't follow "standard" form behavior?
thx

Answer 1

I found this to be an interesting issue so I figured I would do a bit of digging into the jquery source code and api documentation.
My findings:
Your issue has nothing to do with an ajax call and everything to do with the $.serialize() function. It simply is not coded to return <input type="submit"> or even <button type="submit"> I tried both. There is a regex expression that is run against the set of elements in the form to be serialized and it arbitrarily excludes the submit button unfortunately.
jQuery source code (I modified for debugging purposes but everything is still semantically intact):
serialize: function() {
var data = jQuery.param( this.serializeArray() );
return data;
},
serializeArray: function() {
var elementMap = this.map(function(){
return this.elements ? jQuery.makeArray( this.elements ) : this;
});
var filtered = elementMap.filter(function(){
var regexTest1= rselectTextarea.test( this.nodeName );
var regexTest2 = rinput.test( this.type ); //input submit will fail here thus never serialized as part of the form
var output = this.name && !this.disabled &&
( this.checked || regexTest2|| regexTest2);
return output;
});
var output = filtered.map(function( i, elem ){
var val = jQuery( this ).val();
return val == null ?
null :
jQuery.isArray( val ) ?
jQuery.map( val, function( val, i ){
return { name: elem.name, value: val.replace( rCRLF, "\r\n" ) };
}) :
{ name: elem.name, value: val.replace( rCRLF, "\r\n" ) };
}).get();
return output;
}
Now examining the jQuery documentation, you meet all the requirements for it to behave as expected (http://api.jquery.com/serialize/):
Note: Only "successful controls" are serialized to the string. No submit button value is serialized since the form was not submitted using a button. For a form element's value to be included in the serialized string, the element must have a name attribute. Values from checkboxes and radio buttons (inputs of type "radio" or "checkbox") are included only if they are checked. Data from file select elements is not serialized.
the "successful controls link branches out to the W3 spec and you definitely nailed the expected behavior on the spec.
Short lame answer: I think it is teh broken! Report for bug fix!!!

Answer 2

I've run into a rather unusual issue with this. I'm working on a project and have two separate php pages where one has html on the page separate from the php code and one is echoing html from inside php code. When I use the .serialize on the one that has the separate html code it works correctly. It sends my submit button value in its ajax call to another php page. But in the one with the html echoed from the php script I try to do the same thing and get completely different results. It will send all of the other info in the form but not the value of the submit button. All I need it to do is send whether or not I pushed "Delete" or "Update". I'm not asking for help (violating the rules of asking for help on another persons post) but I thought this info might be helpful in figuring out where the break down is occurring. I'll be looking for a solution and will post back here if I figure anything out.