HTML : hiding input radios on form submit

Question

I've got a HTML form that has two possible types ("id" or "profile")

<form action="process.php">
<input type="radio" name="type" value="id">
<input type="radio" name="type" value="profile">
<input type="text" name="value" value="input">
</form>

So essentially, my resulting URL is

/process.php?type=id&value=input

(or type=profile, depending on what the user picks)

What I want is my URLs to look something like

/process.php?id=input

or

/process.php?profile=input 

I have two questions:

1) Is the following jQuery/JavaScript code "bad practice"? I really don't feel like I'm doing it correctly if I do it the following way (even though it works):

<input type="submit" onclick="formSubmit()">
<script>
function formSubmit() {

    // if the first radio (id) is selected, set value name to "id", else "profile"
    $("form input:text")[0].name = $("form input:radio")[0].checked ? "id" : "profile"; 

    // disable radio buttons (i.e. do not submit)
    $("form input:radio")[0].disabled = true;
    $("form input:radio")[1].disabled = true;
}
</script>

2) Is there a way to do this without using htaccess rules or JavaScript?

Thanks!

Answer 1

As for your first question , I'd write my jQuery like this:

// store your form into a variable for reuse in the rest of the code
var form = $('form');

// bind a function to your form's submit.  this way you
// don't have to add an onclick attribute to your html
// in an attempt to separate your pre-submit logic from
// the content on the page
form.submit(function() {
        // text holds our text input
    var text = $('input:text', form),
        // radio holds all of our radio buttons
        radio = $('input:radio', form),
        // checked holds our radio button that is currently checked
        checked = $('input:radio:checked', form);

    // checking to see if checked exists (since the user can
    // skip checking radio buttons)
    if (checked) {
        // setting the name of our text input to our checked
        // radio button's value
        text.prop('name', checked.val());
    }

    // disabling our radio buttons (not sure why because the form
    // is about to submit which will take us to another page)
    radio.prop('disabled', true);
});

As for your second question , you could always move this logic to the server side. It depends if you want the pre-processing logic to be done by the client, or by your server. Either way you should have logic on the server to validate the form. If your js errors out, it could send over the raw form data. Personally I'd put this logic on the server to avoid the overhead of checking to make sure it was pre-processed in the first place. You'll also be able to cut down on your js use which will save you some precious bandwidth.

Answer 2

You could try something like this:

<input type="radio" name="type" value="id" onclick="getElementById('textValue').setAttribute('name','id');">
<input type="radio" name="type" value="profile" onclick="getElementById('textValue').setAttribute('name','profile');">

<form action="process.php">
<input type="text" id="textValue" name="value" value="input">
<input type="submit">
</form>

Put the radio inputs outside the form, have the text input identified by an id so you can use the getElementById function (still needs to be checked if it is supported by the browser). This avoids loading jQuery if you don't need it on this page.

The result is the one expected by you.

But.. I would use server-side processing of the form.