Form inside a table

Question

I'm including some forms inside a HTML table to add new rows and update current rows. The problem that I'm getting is that when I inspect the forms in my dev tools, I see that the form elements are closed immediately after opening (inputs, etc are not included within the form).

As such, submitting a form fails to include the fields.

The table row and inputs are as follows:

<tr>
    <form method="post" action="">
        <td>
            <input type="text" name="job_num">
        </td>

        <td>
            <input type="text" name="desc">
        </td>
    </form>
</tr>

Any help would be great, thank you.

Answer 1

A form is not allowed to be a child element of a table, tbody or tr. Attempting to put one there will tend to cause the browser to move the form to it appears after the table (while leaving its contents — table rows, table cells, inputs, etc — behind).

You can have an entire table inside a form. You can have a form inside a table cell. You cannot have part of a table inside a form.

Use one form around the entire table. Then either use the clicked submit button to determine which row to process (to be quick) or process every row (allowing bulk updates).

HTML 5 introduces the form attribute. This allows you to provide one form per row outside the table and then associate all the form control in a given row with one of those forms using its id.