Difference between handling $("form").submit or an <input type="submit"> click event?

Question

Say I have the following HTML:

<form>
    ...some form fields...
    <input type="submit" id="submitButton" value="Submit" />
</form>

And I have a javascript method validate that checks the form fields for various invalid scenarios, returning true if all is well or false if there's something wrong.

Is there any real difference in jQuery between doing this:

$("form").submit(function() {
    return validate();
});

...or doing this:

$("#submitButton").click(function(){
    return validate();
});

And are there any advantages/disadvantages between the two?

Answer 1

The click callback is called only if the user actually click on the submit button. But there are cases in which you would submit the form automatically by javascript, in that case the click callback is not fired while the submit callback is. I would recommend to use always the submit for validation and intrinsic action of the form, while using the click callback for animation or other things related to the action of clicking on the button.