AJAX within a modal inserting a form in CodeIgniter - ajax

Question

Been struggling with this for about 4 hours, I'm attempting to have a modal drop down (Twitter bootstrap modal) that contains a form to create a Company. This is built in CodeIgniter.
I'm having issues with input type="submit" and input type="button".
I only have 1 required field, which is Company Name. If I use input type="button", the validation will fire correctly inside of the modal, however the form will only INSERT just the company name, along with company_id, user_id, active, and cdate.
Now if I use input type="submit", all the data inserts fine. However, the validation breaks and I get a "Page cannot be found" after clicking "Create Company", the data is still inserting though.
Any ideas? Thanks! New to AJAX...
My AJAX function:
$(document).ready(function(){
$('#create_btn').live('click', function(){
//we'll want to move to page specific files later
var name = $('#name').val();
$.ajax({
url: CI_ROOT + "members/proposals/add_client",
type: 'post',
data: {'name': name },
complete: function(r){
var response_obj = jQuery.parseJSON(r.responseText);
if (response_obj.status == 'SUCCESS')
{
window.location = CI_ROOT + response_obj.data.redirect;
}
else
{
$('#error_message2').html(response_obj.data.err_msg);
}
},
});
});
});
My controller function which handles the insert:
function add_client()
{
$this->form_validation->set_rules('name', 'Company Name', 'trim|required|xss_clean');
load_model('client_model', 'clients');
load_model('industry_model');
$user_id = get_user_id();
$company_id = get_company_id();
if (!$user_id || !$company_id) redirect('home');
if ($_POST)
{
if ($this->form_validation->run() == TRUE)
{
$fields = $this->input->post(null , TRUE);
$fields['user_id'] = $user_id;
$fields['company_id'] = $company_id;
$fields['active'] = 1;
$fields['cdate'] = time();
$insert = $this->clients->insert($fields);
if ($insert)
{
$this->message->set('alert alert-success', '<h4>Company has been added</h4>');
header('location:'.$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']);
}
else
{
$this->message->set('alert alert-error', '<h4>There was an issue adding this Company, please try again</h4>');
}
}
else
{
$err_msg = validation_errors('<div class="alert alert-error">', '</div>');
$retval = array('err_msg'=>$err_msg);
$this->ajax_output($retval, false);
}
}
$this->data['industries'] = array(0=>'Select Industry...') + $this->industry_model->dropdown('industry');
$this->insertMethodJS();
$this->template->write_view('content',$this->base_path.'/'.build_view_path(__METHOD__), $this->data);
$this->template->render();
}
And finally, my view:
<div class="modal hide fade" id="milestone" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="myModalLabel" aria-hidden="true" style="width: 600px !important;">
<div class="modal-header">
<button type="button" class="close" data-dismiss="modal" aria-hidden="true">×</button>
<h3 id="myModalLabel">Add a Company</h3>
</div>
<div class="modal-body">
<?php echo form_open_multipart(base_url().'members/proposals/add_client', array('class' => '', 'id' => 'client_form'));?>
<div id="error_message2"></div>
<div class="row-fluid">
<div class="span5">
<input type="hidden" name="cdate" id="cdate" value="" />
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Company Name: <span style="color: red;">*</span></label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="text" id="name" name="name" value=""/>
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Company Abbreviation:<span style="color: red;">*</span></label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="text" id="abbreviation" name="abbreviation" value=""/>
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Company Image: </label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="file" name="client_image" size="20" />
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="span5">
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Website:</label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="text" id="website" name="website" value=""/>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="row-fluid">
<div class="span5" style="margin-top: 25px;">
<div class="control-group">
<div class="controls">
<p><strong>Client</strong></p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Address 1:</label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="text" id="address1" name="address1" value=""/>
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Address 2:</label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="text" id="address2" name="address2" value=""/>
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">City:</label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="text" name="city" id="city" value=""/>
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">State:</label>
<div class="controls">
<?= form_dropdown('state', usa_state_list(), set_value('state'), 'id=state'); ?>
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Zip:</label>
<div class="controls">
<input type="text" id="zip" name="zip" value=""/>
</div>
</div>
<div class="control-group">
<label class="control-label">Country:</label>
<div class="controls">
<?= form_dropdown('country', country_list(), set_value('country'), 'id=country'); ?>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="modal-footer">
<button class="btn" data-dismiss="modal" aria-hidden="true">Close</button>
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary" id="create_btn">Create Company</button>
</div>
</form>
</div>
So again, to summarize. With input type="button", my validation works great within the modal and only the Company Name is inserting into the database along with company_id, user_id, active, and cdate.
Now, with input type="submit", all data inserts great, however validation fails and I get a redirect to a page cannot be found.
Again, thanks!

Answer 1

The issue is with your ajax function call.
You need to prevent the form from firing (and thus submitting via post to the url in action):
Change:
$('#create_btn').live('click', function(){
To:
$('#create_btn').live('click', function(e){
e.preventDefault();
This should fix the issue. If it doesn't, let me know and I'll do more digging. I would also recommend switching live to on so that you future-proof yourself. on handles the same stuff as live, bind, etc. in a single function with more efficiency.
Edit: To explain what's going on (and why you must use e.preventDefault();), it is because <input type="submit"> will actually submit the form to the url specified in the <form> tag's action attribute. Thus, what's happening with your code is that your javascript is running as soon as you click the button, and then the native browser submit event is occurring immediately afterwards.