javascript - submit the form using ajax

Question

I'm developing an application (a kind of social network for my university). I need to add a comment (insert a row in a specific database). To do this, I have a HTML form in my html page with various fields. At time of submit I don't use the action of form but i use a custom javascript function to elaborate some data before submitting form.

function sendMyComment() {

    var oForm = document.forms['addComment'];
    var input_video_id = document.createElement("input");
    var input_video_time = document.createElement("input");

    input_video_id.setAttribute("type", "hidden");
    input_video_id.setAttribute("name", "video_id");
    input_video_id.setAttribute("id", "video_id");
    input_video_id.setAttribute("value", document.getElementById('video_id').innerHTML);

    input_video_time.setAttribute("type", "hidden");
    input_video_time.setAttribute("name", "video_time");
    input_video_time.setAttribute("id", "video_time");
    input_video_time.setAttribute("value", document.getElementById('time').innerHTML);

    oForm.appendChild(input_video_id);
    oForm.appendChild(input_video_time);

    document.forms['addComment'].submit();
}

The last line submits the form to the correct page. It works fine. But I'd like to use ajax for submitting the form and I have no idea how to do this because I have no idea how to catch the form input values. anyone can help me?

Answer 1

Nobody has actually given a pure javascript answer (as requested by OP), so here it is:

function postAsync(url2get, sendstr)    {
    var req;
    if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
        req = new XMLHttpRequest();
        } else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
        req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
        }
    if (req != undefined) {
        // req.overrideMimeType("application/json"); // if request result is JSON
        try {
            req.open("POST", url2get, false); // 3rd param is whether "async"
            }
        catch(err) {
            alert("couldnt complete request. Is JS enabled for that domain?\n\n" + err.message);
            return false;
            }
        req.send(sendstr); // param string only used for POST

        if (req.readyState == 4) { // only if req is "loaded"
            if (req.status == 200)  // only if "OK"
                { return req.responseText ; }
            else    { return "XHR error: " + req.status +" "+req.statusText; }
            }
        }
    alert("req for getAsync is undefined");
}

var var_str = "var1=" + var1  + "&var2=" + var2;
var ret = postAsync(url, var_str) ;
    // hint: encodeURIComponent()

if (ret.match(/^XHR error/)) {
    console.log(ret);
    return;
    }

In your case:

var var_str = "video_time=" + document.getElementById('video_time').value 
     + "&video_id=" + document.getElementById('video_id').value;