In HTML, forms are a way of receiving input from users and are, therefore, very useful for collecting website data. Forms have a lot of relevance in modern times as they are commonly used for sign-ups, authentication, and comments.
A form can be created with the form
tag.
However, the tag alone isn’t of much use. So, HTML provides a variety of attributes and elements that extend the functionality of forms.
The most useful component of a form is the input
tag, which creates a text field where users can enter data. Here’s an example:
As seen in the code above, there is a type
and name
associated with inputs. The type
defines the nature of the input (text
, submit
, etc), while the name
allows us to access the input data for future use. You can think of the name
as a variable in which the input data is stored. Other properties of input
include:
size
value
maxlength
readonly
A button
can be used to submit the data in a form. This is where the name
of the form will come in handy.
For more details on HTML form attributes, check out the official documentation.