Well, you've got several issues...
First, with setInterval(), you only pass a reference to the function that should be called (validate in your case), you don't actually invoke it as you are doing (validate()). This essentially runs validate immediately and then sets the return value from it as the function to be called every second. Since validate() doesn't return a value, nothing happens every second thereafter.
You also have a typo with: if( ! p1===p2 ), which indicates that the Boolean opposite of p1 is being tested against p2. What you want is: if(p1 !== p2 ), which is how you express "not strictly equal to".
Now, really you are going about validation the wrong way. Instead of running a validation function on a timer, which is inefficient, you'd want to validate in one or more of these cases:
- just before the entire form is submitted
- just after the user leaves a form field
- as the user is entering data
- some combination of all 3
Each of those scenarios is handled through event handlers and a working example of each is shown below.
// Get the DOM references you'll need just once:
var feedback = document.getElementById("feedback");
// Don't set variables equal to property values of DOM elements because
// if you decide you need a different property value, you have to re-scan
// the DOM for the same element all over again.
var p1 = document.getElementById("p1")
var p2 = document.getElementById("p2");
var form = document.querySelector("form");
// Use this to validate when submit is pressed (causing form to be submitted):
form.addEventListener("submit", function(evt){
// If validate function returns false, don't submit
if(!validate()){
evt.preventDefault(); // cancel the form submission
feedback.textContent = "Can't submit. Form is not valid!";
}
});
// Get the elements that need to be validated:
var inputs = document.querySelectorAll("input[type=text],input[type=password]");
// Convert that node list into an array:
inputs = Array.prototype.slice.call(inputs);
// Loop over array and set up event handlers for inputs
inputs.forEach(function(input){
input.addEventListener("blur", validate); // Used to validate when user moves off of each element
input.addEventListener("input", validate); // Used to validate as data is being entered
});
function validate() {
// Keep track of whether the form is valid or not. Assume that it is by default
var valid = true;
// .innerHTML is for when you want to assign a string containing
// HTML to a DOM element. This invokes the HTML parser and renders
// the HTML. If you don't have HTML in the string, use .textContent
// instead, which doesn't invoke the HTML parser and is more efficient
// See if the password was typed in both boxes before telling the user
// that the passwords don't match
if(p1.value && p2.value){
// Are they the same?
if(p1.value !== p2.value){
feedback.textContent = "passwords dont match";
valid = false;
} else {
feedback.textContent = "passwords match";
}
} else {
// If both password fields aren't filled in, the form can't be valid
valid = false;
}
if(p1.value === "") {
feedback.textContent = "Must have a password";
valid = false;
}
// Send a result to the caller so it can be known by other code if the form is valid
return valid;
}
<div class = "mainInfo">
<form name="SignUpForm" action="signUpHandler.php" method='POST' class="inputLists">
<div>username: <input type="text" name="userName"></div>
<div>password: <input id="p1" type="password" name="password"></div>
<div>reenter password: <input id="p2" type="password" name="passwordConfirmation"></div>
<!-- Any form element that has a "name" attribute will submit its name/value as
part of the form data when the form gets submitted. You probably don't want
the actual submit button to be included in this, so don't give the button
a "name" attribute. -->
<input type="submit" value="submit"> <input type="reset" value="reset">
</form>
<div id="feedback"></div>
</div>
