Page refresh on submit

[EchoFool]

Hey I have some ajax on my site which posts messages to a PHP script but it still refreshes the page when they do so which is frustratin and i don't want it doing that.

 

My code:

 

function sendMessage()
{
     $.ajax({
          type: "POST",
          url: "chatpost.php",
          async: false,
          data: "message="+$("#myMessage").val(),
           success: function(msg){
                refreshChat();
           }
      });
}
function refreshChat()
{
      $.ajax({
          type: "POST",
          url: "chat.php",
           success: function(msg){
                $("#chatArea").html(msg);
           }
      });
}

 

Form:

 

<form onSubmit="sendMessage()" method="POST">
<input type="texT" id="myMessage" class="blank" style="width:74%;">

<input type="button" class="blank" value="Send Message" onclick="sendMessage();">
</form>

 

Any ideas on how to prevent the refresh ?

[JasonLewis]

Of course it will, just remove the form tag, because you don't really need it. Or this should do the trick:

 

<form onSubmit="javascript: sendMessage(); return false;" method="POST">

[EchoFool]

Okay that did the trick how ever it does not clear the text in the input box when submit occurs - is there a way to clear afterwards?

[JasonLewis]

You could probably answer that one yourself.

 

When you call refreshChat(), just set the message box to nothing.

 

$("#myMessage").val("");

[EchoFool]

Thank you for the kind reply,

 

If i may squeeze one final question in,

 

I am using a function call every half a second to load the chat with:

setInterval( "updateShouts()", 500 );

So my question is, is this the best way to load the chat ? Or is there a better method, equally should i store logs in a database or a text file, which is more efficient if were talking about lots of users using the script?

 

[JasonLewis]

Well, having never done something like this before that's the way I'd go about it. Using setInterval. I'd perhaps have AJAX check with a PHP function that only queries the database to check if there are new posts, and not actually retrieve them. That way it would be quicker then retrieving the same posts over and over again and updating the chat even if there is nothing new. Then if there are new posts, fetch the data and update accordingly.

[EchoFool]

Hmm how would php return a value to tell the script not to call to update chat as thats stretching my ability a bit xD?