I have a select form element with various URLs, that I want to open in a new window when selected - to do this I have the following code in the element's onchange event:
window.open(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value,'_blank');
This works fine. But I also want to submit the form when changing this select element value - I've tried various things, but I can't seem to get it to work.
I have jQuery, so if it's easier to achieve via that then that's fine.
Update - I've just realised there is another issue with the above, because some of the URLs are actually used to generate and output pdfs, and these do not work - they open and then immediately close (at least in IE7).*
Update 07/05/09 - I really need to come up with a working solution. I did originally get around the issue by displaying links instead of a form select element, but this is no longer feasible.
The reason I need the above is that I have a large number of files that might need to be viewed / printed, too many to reasonably display as a list of links. I need to submit the form to record the fact a particular file has been viewed / printed, then display a log of the file history on the form - I'm comfortable with achieving this side of things, so don't require assistance there, but I thought it would help to place the context.
So, to clarify my requirements - I need a form select element and 'View' button that when clicked will not only launch a file download in a new window (note the above issue I faced when these files were PDFs), but also submit the form that contains the select element.
Here ya go
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
$("#selectElement").change(function() {
if ($(this).val()) {
window.open($(this).val(), '_blank');
$("#formElement").submit();
}
});
// just to be sure that it is submitting, remove this code
$("#formElement").submit(function() {
alert('submitting ... ');
});
});
</script>
<form id="formElement" method="get" action="#">
<select id="selectElement">
<option></option>
<option value="http://www.deviantnation.com/">View Site 1</option>
<option value="http://stackoverflow.com/">View Site 2</option>
<option value="http://serverfault.com/">View Site 3</option>
</select>
</form>