I'm just wondering what are you thinking about DIV-tag inside FORM-tag?
I need something like this:
<form>
<input type="text"/>
<div> some </div>
<div> another </div>
<input type="text" />
</form>
Is it general practice to use DIV
inside FORM
or I need something different?
This question is related to
html
semantic-markup
As the others have said, it's all good, you can do it just fine. For me personally, I try to keep a form of hierarchical structure with my elements with a div
being the outer most parent element. I try to use only table
p
ul
and span
inside forms. Just makes it easier for me to keep track of parent/children relationships inside my webpages.
You can use a <div>
within a form - there is no problem there .... BUT if you are going to use the <div>
as the label for the input
dont ... label
is a far better option :
<label for="myInput">My Label</label>
<input type="textbox" name="MyInput" value="" />
Absolutely not! It will render, but it will not validate. Use a label.
It is not correct. It is not accessible. You see it on some websites because some developers are just lazy. When I am hiring developers, this is one of the first things I check for in candidates work. Forms are nasty, but take the time and learn to do them properly
<div>
tags are always abused to create a web layout. Its symbolic purpose is to divide a section/portion in the page so that separate style can be added or applied to it. [w3schools Doc] [W3C]
some
and another
has.HTML5, has more logical meaning tags, instead of having plain layout tags. The section
, header
, nav
, aside
everything have their own semantic meaning to it. And are used against <div>
I noticed that whenever I would start the form tag inside a div the subsequent div siblings would not be part of the form when I inspect (chrome inspect) henceforth my form would never submit.
<div>
<form>
<input name='1st input'/>
</div>
<div>
<input name='2nd input'/>
</div>
<input type='submit'/>
</form>
I figured that if I put the form tag outside the DIVs it worked. The form tag should be placed at the start of the parent DIV. Like shown below.
<form>
<div>
<input name='1st input'/>
</div>
<div>
<input name='2nd input'/>
</div>
<input type='submit'/>
</form>
Definition and Usage
The tag defines a division or a section in an HTML document.
The tag is used to group block-elements to format them with styles. http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp
Also DIV - MDN
The HTML element (or HTML Document Division Element) is the generic container for flow content, which does not inherently represent anything. It can be used to group elements for styling purposes (using the class or id attributes), or because they share attribute values, such as lang. It should be used only when no other semantic element (such as or ) is appropriate.
You can use div inside form, if you are talking about using div instead of table, then google about Tableless web design
Your question doesn't address what you want to put in the DIV tags, which is probably why you've received some incomplete/wrong answers. The truth is that you can, as Royi said, put DIV tags inside of your forms. You don't want to do this for labels, for instance, but if you have a form with a bunch of checkboxes that you want to lay out into three columns, then by all means, use DIV tags (or SPAN, HEADER, etc.) to accomplish the look and feel you're trying to achieve.
It is completely acceptable to use a DIV inside a <form>
tag.
If you look at the default CSS 2.1 stylesheet, div
and p
are both in the display: block
category. Then looking at the HTML 4.01 specification for the form element, they include not only <p>
tags, but <table>
tags, so of course <div>
would meet the same criteria. There is also a <legend>
tag inside the form in the documentation.
For instance, the following passes HTML4 validation in strict mode:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="test" action="test.php">
<div>
Test: <input name="blah" value="test" type="text">
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
It is wrong to have <input> as a direct child of a <form>
And by the way <input /> may fail on some doctype
Check it with http://validator.w3.org/check
document type does not allow element "INPUT" here; missing one of "P", "H1", "H2", "H3", "H4", "H5", "H6", "PRE", "DIV", "ADDRESS" start-tag
<input type="text" />
The mentioned element is not allowed to appear in the context in which you've placed it; the other mentioned elements are the only ones that are both allowed there and can contain the element mentioned. This might mean that you need a containing element, or possibly that you've forgotten to close a previous element.
One possible cause for this message is that you have attempted to put a block-level element (such as "<p>" or "<table>") inside an inline element (such as "<a>", "<span>", or "<font>").
Source: Stackoverflow.com