How to Create a Login Form with Ajax

See Ajax: Tips and Tricks for similar articles.

An Ajax login form can send data to the server and display an error message without requiring a page refresh. This can make the process of logging in less painful for the user. Here's how to program an Ajax login form.

  1. Create an HTML document.
    
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <title>Title</title>
    </head>
    <body>
    
    </body>
    </html>
            
  2. Create a script block inside your document and write a function named login() that will make the Ajax request when the form is submitted.
    
    function login(form) {
        var un = form.Username.value;
        var pw = form.Password.value;
        var xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
        xmlhttp.open("post", "Login", true);
        xmlhttp.onreadystatechange = function () {
            if (xmlhttp.readyState == 4 && xmlhttp.status == 200) {
                loginResults();
            }
        }
    }
            
  3. Write an event listener that will register an eventListener for the form when the page loads.
    
    window.addEventListener(window,"load", function() {
        var loginForm = document.getElementById("LoginForm");
        window.addEventListener(loginForm, "submit", function() {
             login(loginForm);
         });
     });
                
  4. Create a form.
    
    <form id="LoginForm" onsubmit="return false">
        <h1>Login Form</h1>
        <div class="FormRow">
            <label for="Username">Username:</label>
            <input type="text" size="15" id="Username" name="Username">
        </div>
        <div class="FormRow">
            <label for="Password">Password:</label>
            <input type="password" size="15" id="Password" name="Password">
        </div>
        <div class="FormRow" id="LoginButtonDiv">
            <input type="submit" value="Login">
        </div>
        <div id="BadLogin">
            <p>The login information you entered does not match
            an account in our records. Please try again.</p>
        </div>
    </form>
            
  5. Write a function to receive the results of the Ajax login and display the response text.
    
    function loginResults() {
        var loggedIn = document.getElementById("LoggedIn");
        var badLogin = document.getElementById("BadLogin");
        if (xmlhttp.responseText.indexOf("failed") == -1) {
            loggedIn.innerHTML = "Logged in as " + xmlhttp.responseText;
            loggedIn.style.display = "block";
            form.style.display = "none";
        } else {
            badLogin.style.display = "block";
            form.Username.select();
            form.Username.className = "Highlighted";
            setTimeout(function() {
                badLogin.style.display = 'none';
            }, 3000);
        }
    }
            
  6. Test the form. This example code assumes that your login script is available at /Login, relative to the location of the script. You can customize the Login function and the path to your script for your own needs. Result of Running the Demo Scripts

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