How do I make it compulsory to complete all fields in a form?

[litmania_com]

How do I make it compulsory to complete all fields in an ezine sign-up form?

See my form here.

If you try to fill in the form, you will see that it lets you complete the procedure without filling in all the sections (no name, and for many subscribers the country value="Select Country" ).

Is there anyway to make it obligatory for somebody to fill in all the fields? How can we make all the fields, including name and country, compulsory?

Thank you very much for your help. I appreciate you taking the time to advise me

[weirdbeardmt]

It depends what language you are using, cos there are lots of different ways to do it. Browsing your code it looks like PHP, so you can do this:

if (!isset($submit)):

?>

[code for your form]

<?php

else:

if ($email=="" or $name=="" or $sex=="" or $country=="") 

{

    error("One or more required fields were left blank.\\n".              
        "Please fill them in and try again.");    

}

This will only work however if you are using php_self as your form action. There are also ways of checking with Javascript, or you can add:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="REQUIRED" VALUE="email, name, sex, country">

[Vincent Puglia]

Hi,

The only proper way to make all fields required is to validate each field within the form. For example:

function validateForm(formObj)
{
for (i=0; i< formObj.length; i++)
{
if (formObj.elements[i].type == 'text')
if (formObj.elements[i].length == 0)
alert("you must enter something in " + formObj.elements[i].name + " field.")
..........
}
}


See the "Validating Forms" script/tutorial at my site; it is more of a how-to than a here-is.

Vinny

[litmania_com]

Thank you very much for your help Vincent and 'weirdbeardmt'. I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to assist me.

I've been to Vinny's site, but the coding there is well beyond my grasp. I gave up after half an hour trying to understand it

Is there no simpler way of not allowing the surfer to complete the sign-up procedure unless they enter their name and country?

[weirdbeardmt]

This is quite basic, but it will work (courtesy of www.javascriptsource.com):

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

function checkrequired(which) {
var pass=true;
if (document.images) {
for (i=0;i<which.length;i++) {
var tempobj=which.elements[i];
if (tempobj.name.substring(0,8)=="required") {
if (((tempobj.type=="text"||tempobj.type=="textarea")&&
tempobj.value=='')||(tempobj.type.toString().charAt(0)=="s"&&
tempobj.selectedIndex==0)) {
pass=false;
break;
         }
      }
   }
}
if (!pass) {
shortFieldName=tempobj.name.substring(8,30).toUpperCase();
alert("Please make sure the "+shortFieldName+" field was properly completed.");
return false;
}
else
return true;
}

</script> 

That goes in the head, then this for your form:

<form onSubmit="return checkrequired(this)">
<input type="text" name="requiredname">
<input type="text" name="requiredemail">
<input type=submit value="Submit">
</form>

You can add as many fields as you want, just place required in the name section.