Consider this scenario: You are told to create a small program that must contain a screen with an email field. If a user populates the email field with something other than a valid email address, an error will be displayed. Otherwise, some program should be called.
How would you solve this task? Load SEU with an empty member and then start coding? Of course not. You would copy a program that most closely suits your needs and then modify it.
The same thing applies when you need some JavaScript code to solve a given task. Let's consider this task of creating a form that holds an email field. Before sending off the data to your server, the email should be validated and converted to lowercase. You could of course let the CGI program do the task, but why not add some JavaScript that would do the job?
"Yes," you say, "but how do I find the correct code? I'm not a JavaScript programmer, and I'm not very good at all this funny-looking code."
Well, here's how I did it. I fired up Google, and in the search field, I wrote "javascript validate email dynamic drive." I wrote "dynamic drive" because I know that this Web site holds a lot of good, useful examples.
My search revealed this simple script:
This scripts sets up a regular expressions string, which is then used to validate the email entered in the form. If an error is found, an alert is displayed and "false" is passed back to the form. The script will do 90 percent of what I need, and I'll modify it later.
Next, I needed to find a script that translates a string to lowercase, and I wanted that to happen while I type. I did a Google search for "javascript lowercase onchange" and got this example called "All lower case":
Notice the OnChange and toLowerCase. That's just what I wanted, so 90 percent of that part is done as well.
I have now found two scripts that will do most of the job. Now comes the hard part, where I have to do something myself.
If you don't know anything about JavaScript at all, you have to get some basic knowledge. I recommend the JavaScript Tutorial page at the W3 Schools Web site. This is a great site with a lot of good, easy-to-understand examples. Even if you have some knowledge of JavaScript, you should look at these scripts. I have found that it's not hard to modify them to do what you want them to do.
The HTML Form
Here is how my HTML form looks. This is where we'll incorporate the script.Please enter your information and click submit Email
In the email validation example, this script is placed in the
Now I have this:
Next, I'll add an event to the Submit button that calls the JavaScript function when clicked. It will look like this:
Now I only need to add some code so that the letters will be converted to lowercase as I type.
If you look at the second example I found, you'll see the following line:
onChange="javascript:this.value=this.value.toLowerCase();"
That should to the trick, except the onChange event is not really what I want. So what about the onKeyUp event? I'll add that to the input field:
Now the complete document looks like this:
| Please enter your information and click submit | |
You can see it in action here.
This completes the first of a series of TechTips about how to find the correct script and change it a bit to suit your needs.
To keep you on your toes, the example I provided has a weakness, and I'm looking forward to seeing you find it. See you in the forums!
Jan Jorgensen is one of the founders of Flexware.dk, which specializes in i5 Web solutions. He works with RPG, HTML, JavaScript, Perl, and PHP. You can reach him at
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