96576 - Submitting form controls in OBJECT-embedded HTML

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Mike Gratton]

It would be very useful to be able to submit sucessful form controls in
OBJECT-embedded HTML documents from a form in the parent document.

More verbosely: You have a document containing a form. This form contains a
OBJECT which embedds a HTML document. The embedded HTML document contains form
controls. When submitting the form, any successful controls in the embedded
document should be submitted with it.

Have a look at the page in the URL field to get a better idea of what I'm
talking about.

Comment 1

[Mike Gratton]

OS -> All. D'ohh.

Comment 2

[David Illsley]

Mike,

Having given this a little thought, I have a few comments.
1. This sounds not-to-spec i.e. It probably breaks any number of w3c standards
2. There is an easy way to do a similar thing. Use an iframe to hold the
document containing the form and use javascript and the dom to access the form
elements and deposit them in hidden input elements in the parent document prior
to form submission. This has the advantage of being (nominally) cross-browser.

Just the rantings of a man surviving on coffee :-)

Comment 3

[Mike Gratton]

Yeah, I figured it wiould probably be shady, spec wise. I haven't seen anything
that says you not allowed to do it, but HTML 4.01 does only seem to consider
OBJECTs as single entities for form submission. I though it might be worth a try.

On the IFRAME note, you could do the same thing with OBJECTs, if it wasn't for
bug 96570. Unfortunately, that bug makes it impossible (AFAICT) to access the
content of the object using Javascript.

Which is a pity, w/ IFRAMEs being deprecated and all.

Comment 4

[Greg K.]

I don't think this is going to work, for the same reason styles on the parent document 
don't apply to HTML embedded using OBJECT, and that is that the embedded document 
is a seperate entity, with its' own object model and everything.

Basically, you'd have form elements outside the FORM element proper, which doesn't 
work.

Recommend WONTFIX.

Comment 5

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW until it is worked out.

Comment 6

[rods (gone)]

Over to eric

Comment 7

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

I'd call this WONTFIX, too-the HTML/DOM in the file referenced by <OBJECT>
doesn't interact with that in the file containing <OBJECT>.

Comment 8

[Mike Gratton]

Okay, I'm happy with choess' and greg's aguments, I'll mark WONTFIX in a few
days unless someone objects.

Comment 9

[John Keiser (jkeiser)]

Perhaps when OBJECT can submit this will become possible?  Just have the OBJECT
that contains the elements implement the proper interface and it can submit the
names and values it wants to (once we get done with the bug 120682 rewrite).

The spec problem is easily solvable by saying "name" is a suggestion to the
control of what name to use to submit with.  Very useful in the case of things
like date entry controls, etc.  But if a control wants to submit multiple names
/ values, there's no reason to disallow it.  The only place where it gets hairy
is radio buttons and myControl.form.  These couldn't possibly work as there is
not that much crosstalk between the browser and the object control.  (Is there?)

I think this should be considered.  CC'ing sicking since he was interested in
the OBJECT-submitting-names-and-values thing.

Comment 10

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

IMO we don't want to do this. <object>s should certainly be submittable (as the 
spec says) but only if the page author specifically embeds something that is 
he/she expects to be submitted. For example if doing <object 
classid="myCalenderControl" name="start">. However that is not the case when 
embedding a htmlpage, you wouldn't expect an embedded textfile to act like a 
readonly <textarea> or an embedded jpeg to upload the image, would you?

<objects>s that contains htmldocuments should act like <iframe>s, and people 
would be very surpriced if formcontrols in an <iframe> were submitted along a 
form in the parent doc.

Comment 11

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

WONTFIXing this. The proper thing to do if you want an <object> that contains 
more then one control is to invent something own, instead of (ab)using 
text/html.

Comment 12

[Vladimir Ermakov]

verifying

Comment 13

[Vladimir Ermakov]

hmm really