PHP Form Submission: Recognize Image Input Buttons

By  on  

As you probably know, you can recognize a form submission from a "submit" input type by placing the following code in the "processing" PHP script:

if(isset($_POST['submit'])) { /* do stuff */ }

Did you know, however, that when using an "image" input type to submit the form, the above wont work? You need to add a "_x" to the field name in PHP:

if(isset($_POST['submit_x'])) { /* do stuff */ }

Odd, huh? This works the same when using a form "GET" method.

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

  • By
    Designing for Simplicity

    Before we get started, it's worth me spending a brief moment introducing myself to you. My name is Mark (or @integralist if Twitter happens to be your communication tool of choice) and I currently work for BBC News in London England as a principal engineer/tech...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Simple Image Lazy Load and Fade

    One of the quickest and easiest website performance optimizations is decreasing image loading.  That means a variety of things, including minifying images with tools like ImageOptim and TinyPNG, using data URIs and sprites, and lazy loading images.  It's a bit jarring when you're lazy loading images and they just...

  • By
    Create a Sexy Persistent Header with Opacity Using MooTools or jQuery

    I've been working with the Magento eCommerce solution a lot lately and I've taken a liking to a technique they use with the top bar within their administrative control panel. When the user scrolls below a specified threshold, the top bar becomes attached to the...

Discussion

  1. The _x and _y represent the coordinate location you clicked the image at.

  2. Think this is only an issue with IE.

  3. Yeah. The _x- and _y-coordinates are great for improving the security of a form! I’ve used this to determine if the form has been filled by a human. A spam-bot won’t submit any coordinates but a human has to click on the button and so there will always be coordinates (you’ll have to deactive submitting with the ENTER-button).

  4. @Matthias: Good point on the security enhancement — I’ve never though of that!

  5. Braxo

    @ Matthias

    Thanks for posting your comment. I think telling the user that the ENTER button has been deactivated for bot protection is easier than having the user type in a captcha.

    I’ll definitely be looking into that method and most likely incorporating it into my projects.

  6. @Braxo – Wait – “Enter button” is deactivated? How would this affect someone who cannot use a mouse/relies on accessibility tools to fill out forms and the like?

    Some sites cannot get away with it (coughtargetcough).

  7. You can save yourself the trouble and just give the input a name attribute and check for that. Saves from changing code in two places (the input and the PHP submit validation).

    <input type="image" src="image.png" name="submitted" value="Submit" />

  8. I should clarify that…

    It saves from changing code in 2 places should you want to change to/from an image submit or a standard submit.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!