Form properties and methods

Forms and control elements, such as <input> have a lot of special properties and events.

Working with forms will be much more convenient when we learn them.

Navigation: form and elements

Document forms are members of the special collection document.forms.

That’s a so-called “named collection”: it’s both named and ordered. We can use both the name or the number in the document to get the form.

          document.forms.my - the form with name="my"
document.forms[0] - the first form in the document
        

When we have a form, then any element is available in the named collection form.elements.

For instance:

<form name="my">
  <input name="one" value="1">
  <input name="two" value="2">
</form>

<script>
  // get the form
  let form = document.forms.my; // <form name="my"> element

  // get the element
  let elem = form.elements.one; // <input name="one"> element

  alert(elem.value); // 1
</script>

There may be multiple elements with the same name, that’s often the case with radio buttons.

In that case form.elements[name] is a collection, for instance:

<form>
  <input type="radio" name="age" value="10">
  <input type="radio" name="age" value="20">
</form>

<script>
let form = document.forms[0];

let ageElems = form.elements.age;

alert(ageElems[0].value); // 10, the first input value
</script>

These navigation properties do not depend on the tag structure. All elements, no matter how deep they are in the form, are available in form.elements.

A form may have one or many <fieldset> elements inside it. They also support the elements property.

For instance:

<body>
  <form id="form">
    <fieldset name="userFields">
      <legend>info</legend>
      <input name="login" type="text">
    </fieldset>
  </form>

  <script>
    alert(form.elements.login); // <input name="login">

    let fieldset = form.elements.userFields;
    alert(fieldset); // HTMLFieldSetElement

    // we can get the input both from the form and from the fieldset
    alert(fieldset.elements.login == form.elements.login); // true
  </script>
</body>

There’s a shorter notation: we can access the element as form[index/name].

Instead of form.elements.login we can write form.login.

That also works, but there’s a minor issue: if we access an element, and then change its name, then it is still available under the old name (as well as under the new one).

That’s easy to see in an example:

<form id="form">
  <input name="login">
</form>

<script>
  alert(form.elements.login == form.login); // true, the same <input>

  form.login.name = "username"; // change the name of the input

  // form.elements updated the name:
  alert(form.elements.login); // undefined
  alert(form.elements.username); // input

  // the direct access now can use both names: the new one and the old one
  alert(form.username == form.login); // true
</script>

That’s usually not a problem, because we rarely change names of form elements.

Backreference: element.form

For any element, the form is available as element.form. So a form references all elements, and elements reference the form.

Here’s the picture:

For instance:

<form id="form">
  <input type="text" name="login">
</form>

<script>
  // form -> element
  let login = form.login;

  // element -> form
  alert(login.form); // HTMLFormElement
</script>

Form elements

Let’s talk about form controls, pay attention to their specific features.

input and textarea

We can access their value as input.value (string) or input.checked (boolean) for checkboxes.

Like this:

          input.value = "New value";
textarea.value = "New text";

input.checked = true; // for a checkbox or radio button
        

Please note that even though <textarea>...</textarea> holds its value as nested HTML, we should never use textarea.innerHTML. It stores only the HTML that was initially on the page, not the current value.

select and option

A <select> element has 3 important properties:

select.options – the collection of <option> elements,
select.value – the value of the currently selected option,
select.selectedIndex – the number of the currently selected option.

So we have three ways to set the value of a <select>:

Find the needed <option> and set option.selected to true.
Set select.value to the value.
Set select.selectedIndex to the number of the option.

The first way is the most obvious, but (2) and (3) are usually more convenient.

Here is an example:

<select id="select">
  <option value="apple">Apple</option>
  <option value="pear">Pear</option>
  <option value="banana">Banana</option>
</select>

<script>
  // all three lines do the same thing
  select.options[2].selected = true;
  select.selectedIndex = 2;
  select.value = 'banana';
</script>

Unlike most other controls, <select multiple> allows multiple choice. In that case we need to walk over select.options to get all selected values.

Like this:

<select id="select" multiple>
  <option value="blues" selected>Blues</option>
  <option value="rock" selected>Rock</option>
  <option value="classic">Classic</option>
</select>

<script>
  // get all selected values from multi-select
  let selected = Array.from(select.options)
    .filter(option => option.selected)
    .map(option => option.value);

  alert(selected); // blues,rock
</script>

The full specification of the <select> element is available in the specification https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#the-select-element.

new Option

This is rarely used on its own. But there’s still an interesting thing.

In the specification of the option element there’s a nice short syntax to create <option> elements:

option = new Option(text, value, defaultSelected, selected);

Parameters:

text – the text inside the option,
value – the option value,
defaultSelected – if true, then selected HTML-attribute is created,
selected – if true, then the option is selected.

For instance:

          let option = new Option("Text", "value");
// creates <option value="value">Text</option>
        

The same element selected:

let option = new Option("Text", "value", true, true);

Option elements have additional properties:

selected: Is the option selected.
index: The number of the option among the others in its <select>.
text: Text content of the option (seen by the visitor).

Summary

Form navigation:

document.forms: A form is available as document.forms[name/index].
form.elements: Form elements are available as form.elements[name/index], or can use just form[name/index]. The elements property also works for <fieldset>.
element.form: Elements reference their form in the form property.

Value is available as input.value, textarea.value, select.value etc, or input.checked for checkboxes and radio buttons.

For <select> we can also get the value by the index select.selectedIndex or through the options collection select.options. The full specification of this and other elements is in the specification https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html.

These are the basics to start working with forms. We’ll meet many examples further in the tutorial. In the next chapter we’ll cover focus and blur events that may occur on any element, but are mostly handled on forms.

Form properties and methods

Navigation: form and elements

Backreference: element.form

Form elements

input and textarea

select and option

new Option

Summary

Görevler

Add an option to select

Yorumlar

Bölüm

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