The HTML Form Tag

The HTML form tag marks the boundaries of a data input form in a web page. You can have more than one HTML forms in a single page. However, do not nest HTML forms ( Don't put one form in another form)!

The general syntax of the form tag is given below:

<form action="server-script-url-here" method="GET or POST" >

...Input elements go here...

</form>

Following are the attributes you can have in the form tag:

The HTML form action attribute specifies the URL to submit the data entered in the HTML form. This will normally be a server side script written in a scripting language like Perl or PHP.

Example 1 Absolute URL:
<form action="http://someserver/cgi-bin/handle-data.pl">

Absolute URL is required when the form handling is performed at some other website.

Normally, if the form handling script is in the same website, you can give the relative URL:
Example 2 Relative URL:
<form action="/cgi-bin/handle-data.pl">

Learn about dynamically changing action field in the article:
Switching form action field dynamically

Method of sending data to the action URL. The value is either GET or POST. In the GET method, the form data is sent as part of the URL like:
handle-data.pl?name=john&email=john@server.com

GET method is suitable for small forms like a search form. For larger forms, use the POST method.

Default is the GET method.

The mime type to be used for encoding the form data.

Some examples are:
enctype="text/plain" data is sent as plain text
enctype="multipart/form-data" used when files are uploaded

Specifies the window to be used to load the response of the form submission. You can use the name of a window or any of the following reserved keywords:

_blank	Opens in a new window
_self	The response is loaded in the same window that contains the form
_parent	Loads in parent window. Used when the form is in a frame. The response is loaded in the parent frame
_top	Loads in the top most window. Used when the form is in a frame.

If the Target field is not mentioned, the response is loaded in the current window itself.

If you want to open the response of the form in a new window, you can use _blank for the target field The example below is for a form that loads the results of a search in a new window:

<FORM action="../javascript-form/submit-form.php" target="_blank">
Query: <input type="text" name='query'> <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</FORM>

See the code above at work:
HTML Form Target Field Example

The name attribute is used to give identification to the form. For example, if you are using the JavaScript Form Validator, you will need the name of the form to specify the form validations.

You can find more on HTML Forms in the HTML Form Tutorial