Home/ Questions/Q 375763
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-12T14:32:01+00:00

I had a requirement to copy all fields from one form to another similar

  • 0

I had a requirement to copy all fields from one form to another similar form. So instead of copying field by field I wrote a routine, form2form, using jQuery.

function form2form(aF1, aF2) { 
 var selection = "#" + aF1 + " .copy";
 $(selection).each(function() {
     document.forms[aF2].elements[$(this).attr('name')].value = $(this).val();
   });           
}

the routine works. The routine requires that in input form field have a class of copy otherwise I don’t know how to get all fields in the form. (“#form :input”) skips the radio button and select fields.

So my questions are.

Is there a built in function so I didn’t need this?
Is there a better way to write the selection?
How do I modify the routine not to need the class.
Can I pass form objects rather then the form name as a text?
Is there a better way in general?

this is a full page that works:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>test form2form in jQuery</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../scripts/jquery.js"></script></head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function form2form(aF1, aF2) { 
 var selection = "#" + aF1 + " .copy";
 $(selection).each(function() {
     document.forms[aF2].elements[$(this).attr('name')].value = $(this).val();
   });           
}
function testform2form () {
 form2form ('form1', 'form2' );
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h3>Copy form to form</h3>
<form id="form1" name="form1">
form1: f1 <input type="text" name="f1" id="f1" class="copy" value="from A"/>
f2 <input type="text" name="f2" id="f2" class="copy" value="from B" />
 <select name="fruit" id="fruit" class="copy" >
  <option value="valApple" selected="selected">Apple</option>
  <option value="valOrange">Orange</option>
 </select>
</form>
<form id="form2" name="form2">
form1: f1 <input type="text" name="f1" id="f1" class="copy" value="target A" />
f2 <input type="text" name="f2" id="f2" class="copy" value="target B" />
 <select name="fruit" id="fruit" class="copy" >
  <option value="valApple">Apple</option>
  <option value="valOrange" selected="selected">Orange</option>
 </select>
</form>
<p><a href="#" onclick="testform2form()">Copy Form to Form (form2form)</a></p>
</body>
</html>
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    > Is there a built in function so I didn’t need this?

    Not really. There’s clone(), but that’s more for copying an element to another spot in the DOM. You need to populate a second form.

    > Can I pass form objects rather then the form name as a text?

    Yes:

    function form2form(formA, formB) {
    $(':input[name]', formA).each(function() {
        $('[name=' + $(this).attr('name') +']', formB).val($(this).val())
    })
}

    You can make it a plugin too!

    (function($) {
    $.fn.copyNamedTo = function(other) {
        return this.each(function() {
            $(':input[name]', this).each(function() {
                $('[name=' + $(this).attr('name') +']', other).val($(this).val())
            })  
        })
    }
}(jQuery))

    ps the ":input" pseudo selector does not skip radio or select inputs. It explicitly includes select and input elements (at least in 1.3.2), of which radio buttons are a part of.

    • 0