Getting iPhone GO button to submit form

Question

Is anyone aware of what variables go into a form to make the iPhones virtual keyboard's GO button submit the form vs. not?

I've been trying to narrow down the scenarios and this is what I've found:

• if FORM has only one user input field, go button automatically submits form

• if FORM has more than one user input field, but no INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" then the GO button does not submit the form.

• if FORM has more than one user input field AND has an INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" then the go button does submit the form.

However, that's not completely accurate, as we're running into a situation the 3rd isn't working for us.

Is anyone aware of the other factors that go into the GO button working vs. not working?

Solution 1

So, here was our specific issue:

We had a form with multiple user input fields, but not a true <input type="submit"> (it was being submitted via JS).

As such, the GO button did nothing.

We then added an <input type="submit"> and set it to display: none hoping that would do the trick. Nope. Didn't work.

On a whim, we changed display: none to margin-left: -1000px

That worked!

Apparently, Safari is looking for the presence of a SUBMIT button in the form and only if it's not display: none, it will then fire it when you hit the GO button.

Solution 2

If there are more than one inputs and you want to hide the submit, the best seems:

<input type="submit" style="visibility:hidden;position:absolute"/>

Solution 3

You can also bind a keypress listener to the element or form. The iphone "Go" button is the same as the enter button on a computer, char 13.

$('someElem').bind("keypress", function(e){
    // 'Go' key code is 13
    if (e.which === 13) {
       console.log("user pressed Go");
       // submit your form with explicit JS.
    } 
 });

Solution 4

I could not work out why a very simple google maps form was not submitting using the iPhone Go button.

Turns out, after stripping it down, it does not work with target="_blank" on the form tag.

Removed that, and now the Go button works on iPhone.

Here's a JSFiddle to try it

Solution 5

The code given by the others is correct. If you are using jQuery Mobile then add

data-role="none" 

to the submit input element. Like so:

<input type="submit" data-role="none" style="visibility: hidden; position: absolute;" />

View more solutions

Comments

[Tom S.]

We took the same approach, but instead of margin-left we just pushed it back using z-index and hide it under our graphical button by using some position relative fun.

[DA.]

It appears a form with only one input field WILL submit automatically with the GO button...but not if there is more than one input field in the form.

[Jurgen]

Tried doing it with visibilty:hidden; this works, but obviously the button is then drawn on the screen but not shown... thus taking place and making my form ugly. Setting it to position:absolute; and left:-1000px; worked for me too

[adriendenat]

Beware of that "off screen" techniques ! With css 3d transforms websites (or websites using perspective etc.) even if the object is NOT display on the screen, the browser calculates it. It causes a (huge) drop down in performance (even on the famous text-indent: -9999px !). So I'll prefer the opacity:0/visibility:hidden solution

[DA.]

@Grsmto interesting point! In fact, I think I'm doing this on an iOS app at the moment. I need to double check that it's not rendering when doing the transformations...

[sidonaldson]

Nice solution. Visibility: hidden makes the it not render the item and position absolute hides it but keep it within the page bounds!

[Alex Schröder]

There's a typo: visibility instead of visiblity.

[truongnm]

<input type="submit" style="visibility:hidden;position:absolute"/>

[mike]

I was about to say, that's silly, why would you ever have that on a form element, then I noticed, that was exactly my issue. I had copy/pasted a form from Mailchimp and it had that attribute on it.

[Codemonkey]

Ran into the same problem today. Went with "position:absolute;left:-10000px"