Question

I’ve seen this HTML notation on blogs but they don’t mention how to use it:

<input name="object[property]" value=""/>

How is it called and how do you take advantage of it?
Do I need a templating engine? can jquery populate a form automatically if I provide the JSON object?

Note: I’ve seen that when I post my form, it provide me the bundling of all the data in a js object. My question is more on the initialisation of the form itself.

Answer 1

Maybe this can help: http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/blog/use-arrays-with-html-form-inputs

If you do…

<input type="text" name="object[title]" value="Mr.">
<input type="text" name="object[first_name]" value="First Name">
<input type="text" name="object[last_name]" value="Last Name">

…and send the form as-is, your server-side POST variables will look like this:

//PHP
echo $_POST[object][title]; // echo "Mr."
echo $_POST[object][first_name]; // echo "First Name"
echo $_POST[object][last_name]; // echo "LastName"

Even if you have a JSON object defined, you still need something to fill up your form with default values. (such as a templating engine or straight JS)

var JSON = {
    title: 'Mr.',
    first_name: 'First Name',
    last_name: 'Last Name'
}

for (a in JSON) {
    document.write('<input type="text" name="object[' + a + ']" value="' + JSON[a] + '">')
}​

Here is a fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/remibreton/2cBQB/1/