title: jQuery Validate on form submitted by JavaScript
body: <p>My form is submitted by a link using JavaScript, but I am also trying to validate the from justing jQuery validate.  The validation doesn't work when submitted by the link, but it does if I change the link to a submit button.  What am I doing wrong?</p>
  
  <p>My form:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;form id="findmatch" method="post" action="search"&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
          &lt;label class="formlabel"&gt;Match Type
              &lt;input type="text" name="matchtype" id="matchtype" class="forminput" /&gt;
          &lt;/label&gt;
  
          &lt;label class="formlabel"&gt;Location (postcode)
              &lt;input type="text" name="location" id="location" class="forminput" /&gt;
          &lt;/label&gt;
  
          &lt;label class="formlabel"&gt;Radius (miles)
              &lt;input type="text" name="Radius" id="Radius" class="forminput" /&gt;
          &lt;/label&gt;
  
          &lt;label class="formlabel"&gt;Keywords
              &lt;input type="text" onblur="javascript:usePointFromPostcode(document.getElementById('location').value, showCompleteLatLng)" onchange="javascript:usePointFromPostcode(document.getElementById('location').value, showCompleteLatLng)" name="keywords" id="keywords" class="forminput" /&gt;
          &lt;/label&gt;
  
          &lt;input id="lat" class="hidden" name="lat" type="text" value="" /&gt;
          &lt;input id="lon" class="hidden" name="lon" type="text" value="" /&gt;
  
          &lt;a href="javascript:document.getElementById('findmatch').submit();" onmouseover="javascript:usePointFromPostcode(document.getElementById('location').value, showCompleteLatLng)" class="submit"&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;                        
      &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;/form&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And  my jQuery is</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
      $(document).ready(function () {
          $("#findmatch").validate({
              rules: {
                  location: "required",
                  Radius: {
                      required: true,
                      digits: true
                  },
                  keywords: "required"
              },
              messages: {
                  location: "Please enter your postcode",
                  Radius: {
                      required: "Please enter a radius",
                      digits: "Please only enter numbers"
                  },
                  keywords: "Please enter the keywords you wish to search for"
              }
          });
      });
  &lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>