rest/forms-examples

Forms Examples

As the first stage of the microformats process, this page collects examples of best/common practice for annotating HTML form to describe input data.

The Problem

The vast majority of websites use some kind of forms to receive input -- far more than provide any kind of web services. Currently, people who want to call into those websites need to manually screen-scape and generate urlencoded, or (worse) MIME multipart.

The purpose of this exploration is to determine if there is any consistent design patterns used by forms and/or semantic tagging that would allow automatic extraction of the information needed to generate HTML input.

Participants

• Dr. Ernie

Real-World Examples

Canonical HTML 4 example

<FORM action="http://somesite.com/prog/adduser" method="post">

<LABEL for="firstname">First name: </LABEL>

<INPUT type="text" id="firstname">

<LABEL for="lastname">Last name: </LABEL>

<INPUT type="text" id="lastname">

<LABEL for="email">email: </LABEL>

<INPUT type="text" id="email">

<INPUT type="radio" name="sex" value="Male"> Male

<INPUT type="radio" name="sex" value="Female"> Female

<INPUT type="submit" value="Send"> <INPUT type="reset">

</FORM>

Google

<form action=/search name=f>

<script>...</script>

...Web..Images..Groups..News..Froogle...

<input type=hidden name=hl value=en><input maxLength=256 size=55 name=q value="">

<input type=submit value="Google Search" name=btnG>

<input type=submit value="I'm Feeling Lucky" name=btnI>

</form>

Expedia

<form name=FltWiz method=post action="MoreInfo.asp" style="margin-top:14;margin-bottom:0">

<table ...>

...

<td>

Departing from:

<input type=text name=Fcity1 class=buntext1 maxlength=100 value="">

...

<select class=size11 name=Fday1 onChange="SetDay(1)">

<option value=1>1

</select>

...

<select class=size11 name=Ftime1>

<option value=420>AM

<option selected value=720 selected>Noon

<option value=1020>PM

</select>

...

 

<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=opts VALUE="spec">

<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=Fns VALUE="1">

<input type=hidden name="RM1CHILD1AGE" value="">

<input type=hidden name="RM1CHILD2AGE" value="">

<input type=hidden name="RM1CHILD3AGE" value="">

<input type=hidden name="RM1CHILD4AGE" value="">:::

<input type=hidden name="RM1CHILD5AGE" value="">

<input type=hidden name="RM1CHILD6AGE" value="">

<input type=Submit name=Search value="Search" class=bungreenGoBtn>

...

</table>

</form>

Existing Practices

(first guess)

• Everybody seems to use tables, not labels
• Common tags are:
  • form: name, method, action
  • input: type, name, maxlength, value
  • select: name, onChange
  • option: value

Proposal

• Is the optimal design pattern:

<dt><label ...></dt>
  <dd><input ...></dd>

See Also

• HTML 4.0 Forms
• Xforms