How can I get browser to prompt to save password?

Question

I found a complete solution for this question. (I've tested this in Chrome 27 and Firefox 21).

There are two things to know:

1. Trigger 'Save password', and
2. Restore the saved username/password

1. Trigger 'Save password':

For Firefox 21, 'Save password' is triggered when it detects that there is a form containing input text field and input password field is submitted. So we just need to use

$('#loginButton').click(someFunctionForLogin);
$('#loginForm').submit(function(event){event.preventDefault();});

someFunctionForLogin() does the ajax login and reload/redirect to the signed in page while event.preventDefault() blocks the original redirection due to submitting the form.

If you deal with Firefox only, the above solution is enough but it doesn't work in Chrome 27. Then you will ask how to trigger 'Save password' in Chrome 27.

For Chrome 27, 'Save password' is triggered after it is redirected to the page by submitting the form which contains input text field with attribute name='username' and input password field with attribute name='password'. Therefore, we cannot block the redirection due to submitting the form but we can make the redirection after we've done the ajax login. (If you want the ajax login not to reload the page or not to redirect to a page, unfortunately, my solution doesn't work.) Then, we can use

<form id='loginForm' action='signedIn.xxx' method='post'>
    <input type='text' name='username'>
    <input type='password' name='password'>
    <button id='loginButton' type='button'>Login</button>
</form>
<script>
    $('#loginButton').click(someFunctionForLogin);
    function someFunctionForLogin(){
        if(/*ajax login success*/) {
            $('#loginForm').submit();
        }
        else {
            //do something to show login fail(e.g. display fail messages)
        }
    }
</script>

Button with type='button' will make the form not to be submitted when the button is clicked. Then, binding a function to the button for ajax login. Finally, calling $('#loginForm').submit(); redirects to the signed-in page. If the signed-in page is current page, then you can replace 'signedIn.xxx' by current page to make the 'refresh'.

Now, you will find that the method for Chrome 27 also works in Firefox 21. So it is better to use it.

2. Restore the saved username/password:

If you already have the loginForm hard-coded as HTML, then you will found no problem to restore the saved password in the loginForm.
However, the saved username/password will not be bind to the loginForm if you use js/jquery to make the loginForm dynamically, because the saved username/password is bind only when the document loads.
Therefore, you needed to hard-code the loginForm as HTML and use js/jquery to move/show/hide the loginForm dynamically.

---

Remark: If you do the ajax login, do not add autocomplete='off' in tag form like

<form id='loginForm' action='signedIn.xxx' autocomplete='off'>

autocomplete='off' will make the restoring username/password into the loginForm fails because you do not allow it 'autocompletes' the username/password.

Using a button to login:

If you use a type="button" with an onclick handler to login using ajax, then the browser won't offer to save the password.

<form id="loginform">
 <input name="username" type="text" />
 <input name="password" type="password" />
 <input name="doLogin"  type="button" value="Login" onclick="login(this.form);" />
</form>

Since this form does not have a submit button and has no action field, the browser will not offer to save the password.

---

Using a submit button to login:

However, if you change the button to type="submit" and handle the submit, then the browser will offer to save the password.

<form id="loginform" action="login.php" onSubmit="return login(this);">
 <input name="username" type="text" />
 <input name="password" type="password" />
 <input name="doLogin"  type="submit" value="Login" />
</form>

Using this method, the browser should offer to save the password.

---

Here's the Javascript used in both methods:

function login(f){
    var username = f.username.value;
    var password = f.password.value;

    /* Make your validation and ajax magic here. */

    return false; //or the form will post your data to login.php
}

I have been struggling with this myself, and I finally was able to track down the issue and what was causing it to fail.

It all stemmed from the fact that my login form was being dynamically injected into the page (using backbone.js). As soon as I embed my login form directly into my index.html file, everything worked like a charm.

I think this is because the browser has to be aware that there is an existing login form, but since mine was being dynamically injected into the page, it didn't know that a "real" login form ever existed.

This solution worked for me posted by Eric on the codingforums

---

The reason why it does not prompt it is because the browser needs the page to phyiscally to refresh back to the server. A little trick you can do is to perform two actions with the form. First action is onsubmit have it call your Ajax code. Also have the form target a hidden iframe.

Code:

<iframe src="ablankpage.htm" id="temp" name="temp" style="display:none"></iframe>
<form target="temp" onsubmit="yourAjaxCall();">

See if that causes the prompt to appear.

Eric

---

Posted on http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=123007

There's an ultimate solution to force all browsers (tested: chrome 25, safari 5.1, IE10, Firefox 16) to ask for save the password using jQuery and ajax request:

JS:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('form').bind('submit', $('form'), function(event) {
        var form = this;

        event.preventDefault();
        event.stopPropagation();

        if (form.submitted) {
            return;
        }

        form.submitted = true;

        $.ajax({
            url: '/login/api/jsonrpc/',
            data: {
                username: $('input[name=username]').val(),
                password: $('input[name=password]').val()
            },
            success: function(response) {
                form.submitted = false;
                form.submit(); //invoke the save password in browser
            }
        });
    });
});

HTML:

<form id="loginform" action="login.php" autocomplete="on">
    <label for="username">Username</label>
    <input name="username" type="text" value="" autocomplete="on" />
    <label for="password">Password</label>
    <input name="password" type="password" value="" autocomplete="on" />
   <input type="submit" name="doLogin" value="Login" />
</form>

The trick is in stopping the form to submit its own way (event.stopPropagation()), instead send your own code ($.ajax()) and in the ajax's success callback submit the form again so the browser catches it and display the request for password save. You may also add some error handler, etc.

Hope it helped to someone.

I tried spetson's answer but that didn't work for me on Chrome 18. What did work was to add a load handler to the iframe and not interrupting the submit (jQuery 1.7):

function getSessions() {
    $.getJSON("sessions", function (data, textStatus) {
        // Do stuff
    }).error(function () { $('#loginForm').fadeIn(); });
}
$('form', '#loginForm').submit(function (e) {
    $('#loginForm').fadeOut();
}); 
$('#loginframe').on('load', getSessions);
getSessions();

The HTML:

<div id="loginForm">
    <h3>Please log in</h3>
    <form action="/login" method="post" target="loginframe">
            <label>Username :</label>
            <input type="text" name="login" id="username" />
            <label>Password :</label>
            <input type="password" name="password" id="password"/>
            <br/>
            <button type="submit" id="loginB" name="loginB">Login!</button>
    </form>
</div>
<iframe id="loginframe" name="loginframe"></iframe>

getSessions() does an AJAX call and shows the loginForm div if it fails. (The web service will return 403 if the user isn't authenticated).

Tested to work in FF and IE8 as well.