Question

I would like to have a

      <input type="text" value=VARIABLENAME />. 

Is there anyway I can do this? Putting value = “VARIABLENAME” interprets it as the name of the variable. But I would like to assign the content of the variable to the value property.

EDIT: The variable is from the text content of one of my tables. I got the variable by using doing something like this in my script tag.

       selectedScheduleName = e.target.childNodes[0].wholeText; 

Thank you.

Answer 1

Yes, you can assign a value to the input’s value property from a variable, e.g.:

theInput.value = theVariable;

You do this in the JavaScript, after getting a reference to the input element.

So for instance, if you give the input an id value of “foo”, you can do this:

document.getElementById("foo").value = theVariable;

…within a script tag. (Be sure that the input has already been added to the DOM first, either by putting the script after it — the bottom of the body tag is good — or by using window‘s load event or, if you use a library that supports one, some kind of “dom ready” event.)

The element doesn’t have to have an id, if you can get at it via getElementsByTagName or by the form element’s elements array, etc., etc.

Handy references:

• DOM2 Core specification (well supported cross-browser)
• DOM2 HTML specification (reasonably well supported cross-browser)
• DOM3 Core specification (not quite as well supported cross-browser yet)
• The HTML5 specification now has IDL for the HTML DOM objects in it directly (supplanting/supplementing the DOM2 HTML spec), such as for HTMLElement, HTMLFormElement, and HTMLInputElement