HTMLFormElement: submit event

The submit event fires when a <form> is submitted.

Note that the submit event fires on the <form> element itself, and not on any <button> or <input type="submit"> inside it. However, the SubmitEvent which is sent to indicate the form's submit action has been triggered includes a submitter property, which is the button that was invoked to trigger the submit request.

The submit event fires when the user clicks a submit button or presses Enter while editing a field (e.g. <input type="text">) in a form. The event is not sent to the form when calling the form.submit() method directly.

Note: Trying to submit a form that does not pass validation triggers an invalid event. In this case, the validation prevents form submission, and thus there is no submit event.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

js

addEventListener("submit", (event) => {});

onsubmit = (event) => {};

Event type

A SubmitEvent. Inherits from Event.

Event SubmitEvent

Event properties

In addition to the properties listed below, this interface inherits the properties of its parent interface, Event.

submitter Read only

An HTMLElement object which identifies the button or other element which was invoked to trigger the form being submitted.

Examples

This example uses EventTarget.addEventListener() to listen for form submit, and logs the current Event.timeStamp whenever that occurs, then prevents the default action of submitting the form.

HTML

html

<form id="form">
  <label>Test field: <input type="text" /></label>
  <br /><br />
  <button type="submit">Submit form</button>
</form>
<p id="log"></p>

JavaScript

js

function logSubmit(event) {
  log.textContent = `Form Submitted! Timestamp: ${event.timeStamp}`;
  event.preventDefault();
}

const form = document.getElementById("form");
const log = document.getElementById("log");
form.addEventListener("submit", logSubmit);

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# event-submit
HTML Standard
# handler-onsubmit

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also