a11y.button type missing

a11y.button-type-missing

Rule ID: a11y.button-type-missing Severity: WARN Category: a11y Target Standards: W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 SC 3.2.2 (On Input), HTML Living Standard 4.10.6 (The button element), React SPA Form Submission Invariants

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1. Overview & Core Invariant

Enforces explicit type attribute on elements inside forms to prevent unintended form submission

Core Invariant:

" elements nested within a must explicitly declare their type attribute (type="button", type="submit", or type="reset")."

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2. Technical Grounding & Engine Realities

In HTML and React applications, a without an explicit type attribute defaults to type="submit".

When secondary action buttons (such as "Batal", "Close", "Preview", or modal dismiss buttons) are placed inside a

without type="button":

1. Unintended Submission: Clicking the button triggers the enclosing form's onSubmit handler and validation logic.
2. Unwanted Full-Page Reload: If event.preventDefault() is missing in the click handler, the browser reloads the entire page.
3. State Mutation Hazards: Form fields may be serialized or posted inadvertently to the server.

Charites traverses element ancestors to detect tags rendered inside lacking explicit type definitions.

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3. Vulnerability & Risk Taxonomy

Risk Vector	Severity	Impact
Accidental Form Submission	HIGH	Clicking secondary buttons submits the form, triggers validation errors, or mutates data.
Full-Page Browser Reload	MEDIUM	React SPAs reload the entire page unexpectedly if event.preventDefault is absent.

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4. Non-Compliant Code Patterns (Bad Examples)

TSX (Button inside form lacks type, defaulting to type="submit"):

<form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
  <input name="query" className="h-11 px-3.5 text-base border rounded-lg" />
  <button onClick={handlePreview} className="h-11 px-4 text-sm font-medium">Pratinjau</button>
  <button type="submit" className="h-11 px-4 text-sm font-medium bg-primary text-primary-foreground">Simpan</button>
</form>

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5. Compliant Implementation Patterns (Good Examples)

TSX (Explicit type="button" prevents accidental submission):

<form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
  <input name="query" className="h-11 px-3.5 text-base border rounded-lg" />
  <button type="button" onClick={handlePreview} className="h-11 px-4 text-sm font-medium">Pratinjau</button>
  <button type="submit" className="h-11 px-4 text-sm font-medium bg-primary text-primary-foreground">Simpan</button>
</form>

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6. Detection & Verification Pipeline (How The Rule Evaluates Code)

This a11y rule evaluates template markup and cross-references resolved design tokens for accessibility:

flowchart TD
    Node["AST Node (Astro / TSX element)"] --> Inspect["1. Inspect Interactive & Semantic Attributes"]
    Inspect --> BindCheck["2. Cross-Reference Form IDs / Labels / ARIA"]
    Inspect --> ContrastCheck["3. Query Token Graph for Foreground & Background Color"]
    ContrastCheck --> Luminance["4. Compute WCAG 2.2 Contrast Ratio"]
    BindCheck --> Invariant{"5. Validate Accessibility Invariant"}
    Luminance --> Invariant
    Invariant -- "Compliant" --> Safe["Pass"]
    Invariant -- "Violation" --> IgnoreCheck{"6. Check charites:ignore directive"}
    IgnoreCheck -- "Ignored" --> Safe
    IgnoreCheck -- "Not Ignored" --> Diag["7. Emit Diagnostic: a11y.button-type-missing"]

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Step-by-Step Evaluation:

1. AST Traversal: Inspects semantic elements, form controls, images, and landmark containers.
2. Structural & Attribute Invariant Check: Verifies accessible names, heading hierarchies, label/input bindings, and positive tabindex avoidance.
3. Token-Aware Contrast Verification: If analyzing color classes, queries token.Context to resolve foreground and background values, calculating relative luminance ratios.
4. Directive Suppression Check: Inspects preceding comments for charites:ignore a11y.button-type-missing.
5. Diagnostic Emission: Emits WCAG-grounded diagnostics for non-compliant patterns.

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7. Verification & Test Harness (How The Test Works: 1-SSOT Tri-Corpus)

This rule is rigorously tested and validated across the canonical 1-SSOT Tri-Corpus in tests/correctness/a11y.button-type-missing/:

flowchart TD
    subgraph GoldenCorpus ["1-SSOT Tri-Corpus Test Matrix for a11y.button-type-missing"]
        subgraph P ["Positive Corpus (tests/correctness/a11y.button-type-missing/positive/)"]
            P1["P1: Obvious Direct Violation"]
            P2["P2: Indirect / Variant Concatenation"]
            P3["P3: Helper / clsx / cn Wrapper"]
            P4["P4: Deeply Nested Elements"]
            P5["P5: Aliased Imports / Re-exports"]
        end
        subgraph N ["Negative Corpus (tests/correctness/a11y.button-type-missing/negative/)"]
            N1["N1: Valid Design Tokens"]
            N2["N2: Explicit charites:ignore Directive"]
            N3["N3: Third-Party / Vendor Components"]
            N4["N4: Clean Semantic HTML"]
            N5["N5: Untokenized Custom Values (Banana Test)"]
        end
        subgraph A ["Adversarial Corpus (tests/correctness/a11y.button-type-missing/adversarial/)"]
            A1["A1: Template Literal Interpolations"]
            A2["A2: Ternary Conditional Expressions"]
            A3["A3: Spread Properties & Dynamic Overrides"]
            A4["A4: Dynamic Object Class Syntax"]
            A5["A5: Shadowed Variable Identifiers"]
            A6["A6: Nested Closures & HOC Wrappers"]
            A7["A7: Obfuscated Classes & Cyclic Tokens"]
        end
    end

    P --> TestRunner["Automated Runner (rule_test.go)"]
    N --> TestRunner
    A --> TestRunner
    TestRunner --> Gates["Quality Gates: Zero Panic, Zero False-Positive, Zero Bypass"]

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• Positive Fixtures (P1-P5): Verified to trigger diagnostics at exact lines and column spans.
• Negative Fixtures (N1-N5): Verified to produce zero diagnostics on valid tokens and legitimate exemptions.
• Adversarial Fixtures (A1-A7): Verified to prevent evasion across dynamic expressions, string interpolations, and cyclic references.

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8. How to Suppress (Ignore Directives)

If this pattern is required for an intentional exception, suppress the diagnostic using the canonical Charites Rule ID:

<!-- charites:ignore a11y.button-type-missing intentional exception -->

// charites:ignore a11y.button-type-missing intentional exception

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9. Configuration Reference (charites.yaml)

rules:
  a11y.button-type-missing:
    severity: warn # error | warn | info | off