Note : Both Netscape and Internet Explorer support the Forms collection (Netscape call it an array). For properties, methods and events that are supported by <FORM>
elements, see the <FORM>
topic.
The Forms collection is an ordered, indexed (in document source order) array, containing a reference to every <FORM>
element in a document.
Discrete form objects would normally be retrieved by their index in the Forms collection (for example document.forms(0)
contains a reference to the first <FORM>
element in the document), but a string value can be used, as long as that string is a valid identifier (ID
or NAME
attribute value) for a <FORM>
in the document.
E.g.
document.forms('frmFeedback')
or
document.frmFeedback
both identify the same <FORM>
in the document. The first method makes scripts easier to read and understand though.
length
The length
property returns the number of forms in the collection (and therefore the document). Note that the length
count starts at 1, not 0 as the forms collection index does. Therefore, the length
property may return a value of 5, but to access the 4th form, you'd need to use document.forms(3).property
item
The item
method retrieves single items, or sub-collections from the all collection. It accepts the following arguments:
documentforms.item(index, sub-index)
If index
is a number, then the method returns a reference to the form object at that position in the forms collections index. I.e.
strTag=document.forms.item(2).action
would make strTag
equal to the ACTION
attribute of the documents 3rd <FORM>
element. As you can see, this is effectively the long-hand version of using document.forms(3).property
.
If the index
property is a string value, then the item
method returns a sub-collection, containing a reference to every element in the document that has its ID
or NAME
attribute set to the string contained in the index
argument. To retrieve certain element objects from this sub-collection, the sub-index
argument must be used.
© 1995-1998, Stephen Le Hunte