input field

number Input Type: HTML5

number input type indicates that the input field is used for entering numbers.

Advantages of using number input type:
1. Browsers which support HTML5, provides useful user interface enhancement by providing up and down arrow/tickers to increment and decrement the number.
2. You get a customized keyboard which is optimized for numeric inputs on mobile devices which supports number input type.
3. Using attributes like min, max and step, you can have more control. You can specify the minimum, maximum values the field takes and also you can specify the step for incrementing and decrementing the number using arrow marks.
4. Basic validation to check if the user entered numeric value or not.

HTML file
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>number Input Type: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="no">Number: </label>
 <input name="no" type="number" value="5" min="2.0" max="10.0" step="0.2" />
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have a number input type, with minimum allowed value of 2.0 and a maximum allowed value of 10.0 and a step of 0.2 (fraction).

CSS file associated with this is same as present at pattern and title Attribute of Form Field: HTML5

Form Input Type – number: HTML5

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIiIfqS8190 [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note: Browsers which do not support number input type, simply fall back to text input type, so you can go ahead and implement number input type in your projects without worrying. It’s a good practice to even validate the code at server-side, since browsers can be easily tricked and wrong entries can be made using form elements.

Tel Input Type: HTML5

Lets look at tel Input Type of HTML5 forms.

In this video, I’ll show you that there are no interface changes to tel type input fields. And there are no actual behavioural changes too.

Only advantages, as for now, with tel type input fields are:
1. Screen readers pickup these tel type input fields and hint the visually challenged people that they need to enter their telephone number in the input field.
2. Mobile device browsers which are optimized to work for HTML5, will show up a customized keyboard to the user to enter telephone number rather than the regular text based keyboard.

HTML file
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>tel Input Field: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label>Text:</label>
<input type="text"/><br />
<label>Tel:</label>
<input type="tel"/><br />
<input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have 2 input fields of type text and tel respectively. Both these have similar visual appearance, and behave much the same on our regular computer browsers.

CSS file associated with this is same as present at pattern and title Attribute of Form Field: HTML5

Form Input Type – tel: HTML5

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcnNuyqLY44 [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note: tel type input fields do not validate the user input to check if she entered a telephone number or a random text. Because a telephone number has a wide range of acceptance – like including a hyphen or the number of digits in a phone number vary etc..

URL Input Type: HTML5

Lets look at URL Input Type of HTML5 forms.

In this video, we illustrate how you can implement simple URL validation using url input type.

Source Code: HTML file

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>URL Input Type: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
<form>
<label for="uri">URL: </label>
<input type="url"/>
<input type="submit"/>
</form>
</body>
</html>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>URL Input Type: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
 <label for="uri">URL: </label>
<input type="url"/>
<input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Simple url type input field checks for the presence of http:// followed by some domain name, dot and a valid TLD(Top Level Domain) name.

Video Tutorial: Form Input Type – url: HTML5

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnVK7jecJ0o [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note:
It doesn’t ping the entered URL to check if the URL is actually present or not. It simply checks to make sure the user entered information starts with http:// and ends with a dot followed by a valid TLD.

If viewed on a HTML5 compatible mobile browser, it pops up custom keyboard to facilitate the user to enter URL.

Form Input Type – search: HTML5

HTML5 introduces many new input types, and search is one of them.

In this video I’m illustrating simple interface change that search type input fields bring, compared to the usual text type input fields.

HTML file
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Form Input Type - search: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="srch">Search: </label>
 <input type="search" name="srch" /><br />
<label for="txt">Text: </label>
 <input type="text" name="txt"/><br />
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have 2 input fields, with type search and text respectively. This is to show a simple interface change between the two.

CSS file associated with this is same as present at pattern and title Attribute of Form Field: HTML5

Form Input Type – search: HTML5

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er7nOfllI1Q [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note:
If the user’s browser doesn’t yet support search type, it’ll simply fall back to text type.

Browser manufacturers may even decide to show recent query as suggested entries by default with these search type input fields. And more interface changes may be implemented.

If you’re building application with search field, make sure to implement search type input fields and get the advantages of latest updates to search type input fields.

Dynamic Suggested List: HTML5 + jQuery + PHP + MySQL

Today lets build a dynamic suggested list input field using HTML5, jQuery, PHP and MySQL.

We have 55 company names in our database table – and the import file(.sql) can be downloaded at the end of this tutorial page. By using jQuery we pass user input to suggest.php file and the result is embedded into index.html file.

HTML file
index.html

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<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>Dynamic Auto-Suggestion using datalist element: HTML5</title>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<script src="jQuery.js"></script>
<script src="myScript.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<form>
<input type="text" list="myCompanies" name="company" id="suggest" />
<datalist id="myCompanies">
</datalist>
</form>
</body>
</html>

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>Dynamic Auto-Suggestion using datalist element: HTML5</title>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<script src="jQuery.js"></script>
<script src="myScript.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<input type="text" list="myCompanies" name="company" id="suggest" />
<datalist id="myCompanies">
 
</datalist>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have included jQuery library file before our script myScript.js
We also have an input field of type text, with an id = suggest, name = company and list = myCompanies. And a datalist element is linked/associated with input field, by matching it’s id with the name of input field’s list attribute. The value for option tag will be filled by jQuery, using the results output by suggest.php file.

PHP file
suggest.php

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< ?php
$db = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'root', '', 'search');
$company = $_GET['company'];
$sql = "SELECT name FROM table1 WHERE name like '$company%' ORDER BY name";
$res = $db->query($sql);
if(!$res)
echo mysqli_error($db);
else
while( $row = $res->fetch_object() )
echo "<option value="".$row->name."">";
?>

< ?php

    $db         = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'root', '', 'search');
    
    $company    = $_GET['company'];
    
    $sql        = "SELECT name FROM table1 WHERE name like '$company%' ORDER BY name";
    
    $res        = $db->query($sql);
    
    if(!$res)
        echo mysqli_error($db);
    else
        while( $row = $res->fetch_object() )
            echo "<option value="".$row->name."">";
        
?>

Here we connect php file to database(search). Get the keyword entered by the user in the input field and form a sql query. By using query() method, we process it and finally format it the way we need it i.e., we wrap the company names inside option tag’s value attribute.

jQuery file
myScript.js

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$(document).ready(function(){
$("#suggest").keyup(function(){
$.get("suggest.php", {company: $(this).val()}, function(data){
$("datalist").empty();
$("datalist").html(data);
});
});
});

$(document).ready(function(){
    $("#suggest").keyup(function(){
        $.get("suggest.php", {company: $(this).val()}, function(data){
            $("datalist").empty();
            $("datalist").html(data);
        });
    });
});

For every keyup event on the input field we trigger jQuery method $.get() and pass the user input keys to suggest.php file and the result is collected back by the callback function and the result set is stored in a variable called data.

Now we first make sure to clear out previous data present inside datalist element i.e., we clear the previous results by removing any option tags present inside datalist element. Now we fill the datalist element with the new data/result output from suggest.php file.

Since we’re using jQuery here, page does not reload and the suggested entries looks real and spontaneous.

Here is the list of company names I’ve taken for this tutorial

3M
7-Eleven
Accenture
Acer
Adidas
Adobe systems
Amazon.com
AMD
AOL
Apache
Apple inc
Appolo group
Aricent
Ask.com
Asus
AT&T
Bank of America
BBC
BE Aerospace
BMC Software
Boeing
Bosch Brewing Company
Boston Acoustic
CA Technologies
Citrix Systems
Cognizant Technolog
Cognizant Technology Solutions
Convergys
Dell
Delphi
DHL
Divx Inc
eBay
EMC Corporation
Exelon
Facebook
Ford Motor Company
Fox Entertainment Group
GCI
GoDaddy
Goodrich Corporation
Google
Hawaiian Airlines
Hewlett-Packard
Honeywell
IBM
Intel
Johnson & Johnson
KFC
McDonalds
Microsoft
Motorola
Nvidia
Red Hat
Yahoo!

Video Tutorials: Dynamic Suggested List: HTML5 + jQuery + PHP + MySQL

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqMtE8UO-xw [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note: For any older browsers which do not support datalist element or list attribute, it will simply fall back to text type input field and it doesn’t produce any error.