Buttons inside forms are default type submit

Alec Jacobson

July 18, 2013

weblog/

I was frustrated that my undo button was submitting my form. My HTML code looked something like:

<form action="." method="GET">
...
<button onclick="undo();">Undo</button>
<button onclick="redo();">Redo</button>
...
</form>

At first I thought it was a javascript problem and some how my undo() function was submitting the form erroneously. But lo and behold this is the default behavior of a button inside of a form. So, I needed to change my HTML to:

<form action="." method="GET">
...
<button type=button onclick="undo();">Undo</button>
<button type=button onclick="redo();">Redo</button>
...
</form>