Javascript submit() doesn't trigger form submission

Question

This is the code that isn't working:

<form id="paypal" name="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_parent" />Official website!
    <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Donation">
    <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
    <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF">
    <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" id="currency_code" value="GBP" >
    <input type="hidden" name="business" id="business" value="[email protected]" >

    <a href="javascript: donate(paypal);" class="button1"><span></span><strong>£<input name="amount" type="text" id="ppAmount" style="text-align:center;" value="5" size="2" /> Donate!</strong></a>

    <input type="submit">
</form>

<div id="formtesting"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">

function donate(paypal) {
    document.getElementById("formtesting").innerHTML="maybe...";
    document.forms["paypal"].action = "https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr";
    document.forms["paypal"].submit();
    document.getElementById("formtesting").innerHTML="did it work?";
}

</script>

I want it to submit when clicking on "button1", using "javascript: donate(paypal)" the submit button works fine.. (it prints "maybe" in the formtesting div but not "did it work?" :/)

Answer 1

I ran into the issue of myForm.submit() was not submitting the form. Turns out that my problem was that my submit button's id was 'submit'. Once I changed my id to another name, viola, it worked. Hopefully this helps someone else out there who's run into this same variation of this problem.

EDIT: Also make note of MalcomOcean's comment, below, where the name tag can also cause this issue