jQuery validate - how can I prevent the automatic submit?

I'm keen to use the jQuery validator plugin to validate my code, but I would like to disable to automatic submitting of my form. I'd rather send it myself using the jQuery $.post method.

In fact, I'm not really sure why my form is submitting considering that my buttons aren't of type submit but are just <button></button>.

<form id="my_form" name="my_form" method="post" action="">
    ...
    <button id="previous_button" class="nav-button">Previous</button>
    <button id="next_button" class="nav-button">Next</button>
</form>

and my onClick listener, in which I am hoping that on valid input I can post the form data and then move to a new page, else reposition the window so that the user sees the `error_messages' box where all my error messages show up.

$('#next_button').click(function(event) {
    validateAndSave();
});

function validateAndSave() {
    if($('#my_form').valid()) {
        $.post('save_form_to_database.php', 
            $('#my_form').serialize());
        window.location = 'next_page.php';
    } else {
        // reposition to see the error messages
        window.location = '#error_messages';
    }
}

The result of this though (and the result is the same whether debug is set to true or false) is that on valid input, I can see by looking at the status bar that `next_page.php' flashes up briefly and then I get taken back to my original page again. Also on failure of validation, my page doesn't seem to repo开发者_运维知识库sition itself properly.

So my questions are:

• Why is my page being redirected back to the original page?

• How can I use the validator to validate, but then post the form my own way using $.post?

Many thanks in advance.

Update thanks to the responses

According to this page on the button element:

The TYPE attribute of BUTTON specifies the kind of button and takes the value submit (the default), reset, or button

So my buttons were taking the default value of type="submit"

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Specify your buttons as type="button" to stop the automatic submit. This one gets me all the time.

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Why is my page being redirected back to the original page?

No clue; as you said, it's a button, not an input type="submit", so it shouldn't be submitting. If you remove the JS handler does it still submit?

How can I use the validator to validate, but then post the form my own way using $.post?

Return false (from the click handler, to make sure you don't trigger that weird button behavior) and use a callback to send the user to the next page. Right now your POST starts, then you immediately go to the next page. What I think you want to do is go to the next page AFTER the POST returns, and to do that you just need to put your window.location inside a callback function that you pass to $.post.

Hopefully this helps, but if not post back.

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You should add

 return false;

Inside the validateAndSave function. This way you can deny the submit and handle post with js.

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$('#next_button').click(…);

Instead of binding to the button’s click event, bind to the form’s submit event.

I would consider that a more reliable way to catch the form being submitted, and you can return false from the event handler, or call .preventDefault() on the event object, to stop the form from being submitted.