Javascript: Checked radio button

Question

In one page I have two form for search:

<form class="search-panel" method="post" action="" onsubmit="return searchRedirect(this)">
        <input type="test" name="searchFor" />
        <div class="additional-search-button"></div>
        <div id="additional-search-box">
            <div class="as-cont">
                Books<input type="radio" name="category" value="Books" checked="1" /><br/>
                School<input type="radio" name="category" value="School" /><br/>
                Music<input type="radio" name="category" value="Music" />
            </div>
        </div>
       <input type="submit" name="search" />
    </form>

<form class="search-panel" method="post" action="" onsubmit="return searchRedirect(this)">
            <input type="test" name="searchFor" />
            Games<input type="radio" name="category" value="Games" checked="1" />
            <input type="submit" name="search" />
        </form>

My problem is that if I click search for Games in searchRedirect always alert Books, School or Music if they checked:

That is my javascript function:

function searchRedirect(form) {
    alert($(form['category']+':checked').val());

    if($(form['category']+':checked').val() == 'Форум')
        window.location.href = '/forum/search.php?keywords='+form['searchFor'].value;
    else {
        window.location.href = '/Search/'+$(form['category']+':checked').val()+'/'+form['searchFor'].value;
    }

    return false;
}

I need if I click to search games - search only for games, if click to search books,school or music - searching only for them. But now search form for games always use first form checked buttons.

Answer 1

form['category'] will give you a NodeList of all form elements whose name is category , thus you can't use it as a selector by concatenating it with :checked . It'd be the equivalent of $("[object NodeList]:checked") .

Since you are already using jQuery, you can use the following instead:

alert($(form).find("input[name='category']:checked").val());

That is, within the context of form , find every input element with name category that is checked , and get its value .

Answer 2

you can't real do form["category"] + ":checked" , instead use jQuery's filter method and than use 'this' to reference the form. Also, you can/should use jQuery .submit() to catch the event instead of an inline handler and just for clearer code (and also for better performance) put the $(form['category']+':checked') into a variable so jquery won't need to search for the element again and again. This is a sample:

$('form').submit(function(e){
var checked = $(this['category']).filter(':checked');
var value = checked.val();
alert(value);
})​

This is a fiddle so you can fiddle (the e passed to the submit callback is the event object and e.preventDefault is like returning false so the form won't submit): http://jsfiddle.net/SJ7Vd/