Form submission and handling in HTML

In HTML, form submission and handling is accomplished using the <form> element and associated attributes and events. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to create a form and handle its submission using HTML:

1. Start by creating an HTML form element using the <form> tag. This tag acts as a container for all the form controls and defines the scope of the form data.

<form method="POST" action="/submit-form">
  <!-- form controls go here -->
</form>

In the above example, we specify the method attribute with the value “POST”. It indicates that the form data will be sent to the server using the HTTP POST method. The action attribute specifies the URL where the form data should be submitted.

2. Inside the <form> tag, you can include various form controls such as text inputs, checkboxes, radio buttons, select dropdowns, etc. Use the appropriate HTML tags for each control.

<form method="POST" action="/submit-form">
  <label for="name">Name:</label>
  <input type="text" id="name" name="name" required>

  <label for="email">Email:</label>
  <input type="email" id="email" name="email" required>

  <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

In this example, we have two text inputs for name and email, and a submit button. The name attribute is used to identify the form control when the form is submitted.

3. To handle the form submission, you can use server-side technologies like PHP, Python, or JavaScript. In this HTML-only example, we’ll use a placeholder URL (/submit-form) as the action attribute value.

When the user submits the form, the browser will send an HTTP POST request to the specified action URL. You need a server-side script or endpoint at that URL to handle the request and process the form data.

4. Once the form is submitted, the user is typically redirected to another page or receives a confirmation message. You can specify the destination URL or display a message using the server-side script or by utilizing JavaScript.

Remember, for a fully functional form submission, you’ll need server-side processing. The HTML form itself only provides the structure and data to be sent.

Note: If you want to handle the form submission without leaving the current page, you can use JavaScript to capture the form submission event and handle it asynchronously using AJAX.