Question

I’m sending users an email. In this email they must click a link that brings them to the login page of my site:
http://www.testsite/login

I’d like the username(Email address) to be prepopulated for them.

I was thinking of simply adjusting the link sent to them to include it like so:
http://www.testsite/login?email=[e-mail]

I can then use some javascript to pull this info and place it in the form field.

I’d like people thought’s on this approach.
Is it safe? Is there a better or easier way to achieve it? Is there any problems with this approach?

My app uses grails 1.3.7 by the way.

Thanks

Answer 1

Though it would probably be better to pre-populate it on the server side, here is a modification of another answer on Stack Overflow:

function getEmailFromUrl(){
   var regexS = "[\\?#&]email=([^&#]*)";
   var regex = new RegExp(regexS);
   var results = regex.exec(window.location.search);
   if(results == null) return "";
   else return decodeURIComponent(results[1].replace(/\+/g, " "));
}

Then, use that the result of that function to populate the textbox:

document.getElementById('email_address').value=getEmailFromUrl();

Hope this helps.