A anchor as submit button with value - php

Question

This may seem like a duplicate question but I have googled and search stackoverflow how an a anchor tag would act like as a submit that would fit on the website that I am trying to do.
I have this code on my right panel navigation:
<div class="content clearfix">
<div class="left_column">
<div class="product_menu">
<? if($_SESSION['logged_in'] == 1) {
$customer_panel = '
<div class="customer_nav">
<h1 class="customer_nav_name">Hello ' . $_SESSION['fname'] . ',</h1>
<ul class="clearfix">
<li>View Profile</li>
<li>Update Information</li>
<li>
<!-- this is where i would like the signout button to act as a submit
i have left it plane to start from scratch -->
Sign Out
</li>
</ul>
</div>';
echo $customer_panel;
}?>
<h2><span>Product Categories</span></h2>
<ul id="prod_nav" class="clearfix">
<li class="top"><span>Processed Meat</span></li>
<li class="top"><span>Ready Made</span></li>
<li class="top"><span>Siomai & Siopao</span></li>
<li class="top"><span>English Pork Snacks</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
And here is my usual code when i use a submit button and not an anchor tag to make a POST method:
if(isset($_POST['signout'])) { // logout button
// Clear and destroy sessions and redirect user to home page url.
$_SESSION = array();
session_destroy();
// Redirect to where the site home page is located -- Eg: localhost
header('Location: http://localhost/');
}
I have read many of this questions but I don't know jQuery or how to achieve this using javascript.
I also tried using this solution:
<form id="signout" action="index.php" method="post">
Sign Out
<input type="hidden" name="signout" value="signout"/>
</form>
that I kinda found from here at stackoverflow.
The problem about this is that if I include the onclick="" , the whole page does not show. but if i remove it, the page comes back to normal. - it doesn't work inside an <li> element.
It might sound basic, but it would help me and other new starters to understand how to make it possible. Thank you very much. :)

Answer 1

Try this,
STEP 1 :
Put the following scripts in your html file.
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.0.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
$('.signout-btn').click(function() {
$('#signout').submit();
});
})
</script>
STEP 2 :
Add an attribute class="signout-btn" to anchor tags, which you want to trigger the form submission.