

Ask HN: How do i make a form usable? - redxblood

Okay, I built my own webpage, but i have a form where users fill in data (name, address, etc) and then they click a &quot;submit&quot; button. 
I understand i need another language besides HTML and CSS to make the submit actually happen.
I&#x27;ve heard of javascript libraries such as Node.js and jQuery, though sincerely i have no idea if they are what i&#x27;m looking for. 
What should i learn next in order to make my form functional?
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uptown
If you just need to get some data - maybe use something like this:

[https://support.google.com/drive/answer/87809?hl=en](https://support.google.com/drive/answer/87809?hl=en)

[http://www.wufoo.com/](http://www.wufoo.com/)

If you want to develop it all yourself, you'll need someplace for the
submitted form data to go. This means building some software that resides on a
server ... so you'll want to learn Ruby or Python or PHP or something like
that to process the submitted data.

There's lots of online educational resources. Maybe check out
[http://www.codecademy.com/](http://www.codecademy.com/) where they'll step
you through the basics of building a webpage.

~~~
redxblood
I saw your links, but they're not what i'm looking for specifically.. I
already have a form, but i don't know how to actually SEND the data to a
server. Once the data is in the server i can process it. But how do i get it
there?

~~~
uptown
This explains the basics. The "action" attribute of your form tag tells the
form where to send the data.
[http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp)

~~~
redxblood
I see... So in your example, the data sent goes to a page called
"/html_form_action.asp" How does the server process this information? I assume
it uses a server-based language? Which languages are usable?

Sorry if i have a lot of questions. I understand it could be annoying.

