Troubleshooting HTML Form Controls: Resolving the ‘Invalid Form Control’ Error

Last Updated : 07 May, 2023

HTML form is used to collect input from users, where form acts like a container for different types of input like text, number, or checkboxes. Form is an important part in web development, which allows users to input and submit data, making the application interactive.

However, when working with forms you may see this error “Invalid form control”. This error indicates there is something wrong with the user input that needs to be corrected before submitting the form.

In this article, we will discuss some common causes of the “Invalid Form Control” error and how to troubleshoot them.

Approach: One common cause of the “Invalid Form Control” error is missing or incorrectly formatted HTML attribute values. For example, if the “type” attribute is incorrectly formatted, the browser may not be able to validate the input. Let us understand this with one example of Incorrectly Formatted HTML Attribute Values. To troubleshoot this issue, ensure that all form control attributes are correctly formatted and that none are missing.

This error “An invalid form control with name=” is not focusable” occurs when you are using HTML forms and a form control is missing a required attribute.

Step-1: Run the following HTML code.

Step-2: Click on submit button.

Step-3: You will see the error in console, when you inspect this code.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
  
<head> 
    <title>Page Title</title> 
</head> 
  
<body> 
    <h2>Welcome To GFG</h2> 
    <form> 
        <div style="display: none;"> 
            <input name=" " type="text" required /> 
        </div> 
        <input type="submit" /> 
    </form> 
  
</body> 
  
</html> 

Output of HTML code

Console output

To solve this error, When a control is hidden, just remove “required” attribute or give a proper name.

Here, The browser is trying to access a control that is “required”, but it is empty(user have not filled anything on the required field.) So the browser will pop up a warning text “Please fill out this field”. However, the control is hidden so when a user will click on submit button, the browser can not focus on the control as it is hidden and the form will not get submitted.

Another reasons that can cause this error are :

Incorrectly Formatted Data: In this we need to ensure that the data entered by the user is in the correct format. If a user enters a number in place of name, the browser may throw this error.
Incompatible Browser Versions : Different browsers may have different requirements for HTML form control validation. For example, a form that works correctly in one browser may produce an error in another. To solve this , ensure that the form is compatible with all major browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge.
JavaScript Errors: If you have made sure every troubleshooting way above, there is a possibility that main error is in your script.

To conclude, the “Invalid Form Control” error can be caused by a variety of factors, including missing or incorrectly formatted HTML attribute values, incompatible browser versions, incorrectly formatted data, and JavaScript errors. By using the above troubleshooting methods, we can make sure that users face no errors while submitting forms.

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