How to Capture and Redirect Form Submissions

In this article, we will explore how to capture form submissions and redirect them to a new route in a web application. We will use JavaScript to handle the form event, sanitize the input, and redirect the user to the desired destination.

Setting Up the Input Field

To begin, let's set up a basic input field where users can type in their search query. We will capture the submit event of the form and redirect it to a new route called "search".

1. Create a form element in your HTML file:

<form><inputtype="text"id="searchInput"placeholder="Type your search query"></form>

2. In your JavaScript file, add an event listener to capture the submit event:

constform=document.querySelector('form');form.addEventListener('submit',handleSubmit);

Capturing the Submit Event

Next, we need to capture the submit event and prevent the default form submission behavior. We will also retrieve the search term from the input field.

1. Define the handleSubmit function:

functionhandleSubmit(event){event.preventDefault();constsearchInput=document.querySelector('#searchInput');constsearchTerm=searchInput.value.trim();// Rest of the code goes here}

2. Inside the handleSubmit function, check if the search term is empty:

if(searchTerm===""){return;}

Redirecting to the Search Route

After capturing the search term, we can redirect the user to the search route by updating the window.location.

1. Create a new URL object with the search route:

constsearchRoute=newURL('/search',window.location.origin);searchRoute.searchParams.set('query',searchTerm);

2. Redirect the user to the search route:

window.location.href=searchRoute.toString();

Sanitizing User Input

To prevent any malicious code from being injected into the URL, we can sanitize the search term before redirecting the user. We will use the dompurify library for this purpose.

1. Install the dompurify library using npm:

npminstalldompurify

2. Import the dompurify library into your JavaScript file:

importDOMPurifyfrom'dompurify';

3. Sanitize the search term using dompurify.sanitize:

constsanitizedSearchTerm=DOMPurify.sanitize(searchTerm);

With the input sanitized, you can now safely redirect the user to the search route without worrying about any malicious code.

Conclusion

In this article, we have learned how to capture form submissions, sanitize user input, and redirect the user to a new route. By following these steps, you can ensure the secure handling of user input in your web application.