jQuery form.submit() refreshing page instead of submitting

Question

I'm using .submit() to detect when a form is submitted, but instead of performing its attached function, it's refreshing the page.

I'm building a tool for drawing family tree diagrams (using nested lists) at http://chris-armstrong.com/familytree .

To add a descendent, you turn controls on, and it adds <li class="add_member">+</li> to each <ul> (or generation).

When you click on an <li class="add_member">+</li> element, it replaces the + with an <form class="add_member> consisting of an <input> and a <submit> button. I've then used $("form.add_member").submit() to detect when the submit button is clicked, and it should then replace the form with the contents of the <input>, however at this point it just refreshes the page (and adds a ? to the URL).

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? I've attached the whole function below.

function addAddListeners() {
            $('li.add_member').click(function(){

            //create input form
            $(this).html("<form class='add_member'><input id='fn_' placeholder='Name' required autofocus /><button type='submit'>Add</button></form>")

            //listen for input form submission
            $("form.add_member").submit(function(){

            //if input form isn't blank, create new li element with content of form, else go back to the add_member li
            if($('form.add_member').val()) {
                        $(this).replaceWith('<li><span class="vcard" title="Click to edit this members details"><span class="edit fn">'+$('input#fn_').val()+'</span></span><ul><li class="add_member">+</li></ul></li><li class="add_member">+</li>'); 
                        addEditListeners();
                        addAddListeners();  
                    } else {
                        alert("no change");
                    $(this).html("+");
                    }
                });

            });
        }

EDIT: Adding return false; stops the page refreshing, but the function attached to .submit() doesn't seem to be firing off, any ideas why?

Answer 1

1. You need to return false; or event.preventDefault(); from the submit function to prevent the default form action from happening.
2. You should look into jQuery on with delegation so you don't have to rebind events when new elements are added to the DOM.

Answer 2

Add a return: false; to your submit function:

$("form.add_member").submit(function(){

            //if input form isn't blank, create new li element with content of form, else go back to the add_member li
            if($('form.add_member').val()) {
                        $(this).replaceWith('<li><span class="vcard" title="Click to edit this members details"><span class="edit fn">'+$('input#fn_').val()+'</span></span><ul><li class="add_member">+</li></ul></li><li class="add_member">+</li>'); 
                        addEditListeners();
                        addAddListeners();  
                    } else {
                        alert("no change");
                    $(this).html("+");
                    }
                });
            return false;
            });