November 16, 1999 - Referencing Forms | WebReference

November 16, 1999 - Referencing Forms

Yehuda Shiran November 16, 1999
Referencing Forms
Tips: November 1999

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

Each <FORM>...</FORM> tag pair defines one form. A single HTML document can contain several different forms, containing various form elements. JavaScript provides two main ways to reference a form:

document.formName
document.forms[index]

Take a look at the following document:

<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>Forms</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY>
<FORM NAME="firstForm"></FORM>
<FORM></FORM>
<FORM NAME="thirdForm">
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="myField" SIZE="30">
</FORM>
</BODY>
</HTML>

The value of the text field in the third form can be retrieved in one of the following fashions:

document.thirdForm.myField.value
document.forms[2].myField.value

Notice that the forms array (a property of the document object) is zero-based. In other words, 0 reflects the first form, 1 reflects the second form, and so forth.

Note that the document.forms object can also be used with the name of the desired form (like a Visual Basic collection):

document.forms.thirdForm
document.forms["thirdForm"]

The forms array is supported by all JavaScript-enabled browsers, including Navigator 2.0x and Internet Explorer 3.0x.