The jQuery serialize()

method turns the form values into a valid querystring, as such you can simply append to the string:

firstName=Maurizio&lastName=Tarchini

Useful, right?

Lets take an example:

<p><em></em></p><form action="#" id="input_form"><em>
       first name: <input name="firstName" type="text"><br>
       last name: <input name="lastName" type="text"><br>
       email: <input name="email" type="text"><br>
       <input value="send" name="submit" type="submit"> <br>
</em></form><p></p>

Lets say you want to send the form's data like first name, last name etc. using ajax to some other page, Then what you will write in

<p>*$("#input_form").submit(function(){
        var first name = $('input[name=first name]').val();
        var last name = $('input[name=last name]').val();
        var email = $('input[name=email]').val();
        var querystring = "first name="+first name+"&amp;last name="+last name+"&amp;email="+email;</p>

<pre>    $.ajax({
        url: 'elaboration.php',
        type: "POST",
        data: querystring,
        success: function(data) {
            //code to execute
                }
        });
        return false;
</pre>

<p>});*</p>

As you can see, in submit event, I start extracting one at a time the data contained in the form fields. Afterwards, I create the querystring variable in the format requested by the ajax method (name=value&name=value).

using the serialize() method we can achieve everything with a single and simple line of code.

How to use the serialize method?

Simple. Instead of this ?

<p>$("#input_form").submit(function(){
    var first name = $('input[name=first name]').val();
    var last name = $('input[name=last name]').val();
    var email = $('input[name=email]').val();
    var querystring = "first name="+first name+"&amp;last name="+last name+"&amp;email="+email;</p>

<p>Enough doing this?</p>

<p>$("#input_form").submit(function(){
    var querystring = $(this).serialize();
}</p>

Will Give you the query String.