I’m a big fan of Stack Overflow and I tend to contribute regularly (am currently in the top 0.X%). In this category (stackoverflow) of posts I will will be posting my top rated questions and answers. This, btw, is allowed as explained in the meta thread here.

So, my question was if, for example, we have this HTML form code:

<form action="#" id="gamesForm">
    <p>                                                        
        <input id="gName" type="text" class="medium" />
        <span class="notification information">Game name</span>
    </p>

    <p>                            
        <span class="notification information">Enabled:</span>
        <input id="gEnabled" type="checkbox" />              
    </p>


    <br />
    <!--Additional data for extra type-->
    <div id="extraAdditionalData" class="hidden">                            
        <p>
            <input id="rRacers" type="text" class="medium" />
            <span class="notification information">Racers</span>
        </p>

        <p>
            <input id="rVideoSet" type="text" class="medium" />
            <span class="notification information">Video set</span>
        </p>                                                         
     </div>                
</form>

<a href="#" id="saveConfiguration" class="graybuttonBig">Save everything!</a>

And this js code:

$(document).ready(function(){
    $("#saveConfiguration").click(function(){
        alert( $("form").serialize() );   
    });
});

How come that all I get in the alert is an empty string?

The answer, by user Felix Kling, was:

You have to give your form elements names!

This is independent of jQuery. Every form element must have a name to be considered for form submission as successful control:

A successful control is “valid” for submission. Every successful control has its control name paired with its current value as part of the submitted form data set. A successful control must be defined within a FORM element and must have a control name.

jQuery just ignores those elements that don’t have a name (or, depending on how it gets the elements, it might not even see them as the form itself has no reference to them).

My favourite quotes from the book The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien:

You are not easy to carry around, not even after few weeks of your starvation.

This would be a much happier world if more of us would stick to the eating, singing and happiness than to the vast piles of gold.