Peter Deacon Reporter
	Description • 19 years ago

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

A simple HTML form is not visible to javascript .. referencing via document.forms[0]..etc acts as if the form object does not exist.  It works if text is entered anywhere in the form block and some form objects will make it work for example a SELECT list.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run this block of code:

<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION=test.html>
<INPUT NAME=testme>
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=CountryID VALUE=840>
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=GroupID VALUE=1>
</FORM>

<SCRIPT>
alert(document.forms[0].CountryID.value);
</SCRIPT>

To get it to work one just needs to include text inside of the FORM block or use certain types of html form controls.
Actual Results:  
No alert pop up box, javascript error in console Error: document.forms[0] has no properties.

Expected Results:  
Alert popup should spit out "840"

It's easy to workaround but it seems some web applications folks can't modify are using just such a scheme.

	José Jeria
	Comment 1 • 19 years ago

Works for me, please attach a minimized testcase showing this issue:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?bugid=324262&action=enter

	Peter Deacon Reporter
	Comment 2 • 19 years ago

(In reply to comment #1)
> Works for me, please attach a minimized testcase showing this issue:
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?bugid=324262&action=enter

This is the simplest case I could make to show the problem:

<FORM METHOD=POST>
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=CountryID VALUE=840>
</FORM>

<SCRIPT>
alert(document.forms[0].CountryID.value);
</SCRIPT>

I've tried this with mozilla 1.5, 1.0.7 and 1.0.4 on the linux platform and they all give the same results.

	José Jeria
	Comment 3 • 19 years ago

This works for me, i get an alert saying "840"

	Philip Puryear
	Comment 4 • 19 years ago

WFM on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060120 Firefox/1.6a1

	Philip Puryear
	Comment 5 • 19 years ago

...but this one doesn't WFM.

Note: I renamed my above testcase to "Cleaned-up testcase."

	Hermann Schwab
	Comment 6 • 19 years ago

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060120 SeaMonkey/1.5a

reporter's testcase is wfm, the "cleaned-up testcase" is made from it by removing HTML, head and body tags, and tags capitalized:

<FORM METHOD=POST>
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=CountryID VALUE=840>
</FORM>
<SCRIPT>
alert(document.forms[0].CountryID.value);
</SCRIPT>

That testcase didn't work and was showing a warning and an error in JS console.
I pasted it into the body of an empty HTML sheet in composer, saved and loaded it from disk into the browser, was working. Reloading the original "Cleaned-up" testcase was now working too, but gave another message in JS Console, not the original messages:

Error: [Exception... "'Permission denied to get property XULElement.accessKey' when calling method: [nsIDOMXULLabelElement::accessKey]"  nsresult: "0x8057001e (NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING)"  location: "JS frame :: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209242 :: <TOP_LEVEL> :: line 9"  data: no]
Source File: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209242
Line: 9

	Peter Deacon Reporter
	Comment 7 • 19 years ago

The thing is that it works as long as you save it from the html editor because the editor changes the data and adds the BODY tag.  With the BODY tag the problem goes away.  To reproduce you need to create a raw file with just the data in my test case and *nothing* else around it.

	Philip Puryear
	Comment 8 • 19 years ago

(In reply to comment #6)
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060120 SeaMonkey/1.5a
> 
> reporter's testcase is wfm, the "cleaned-up testcase" is made from it by
> removing HTML, head and body tags, and tags capitalized:

I think you've got them reversed. ;)

	Philip Puryear
	Comment 9 • 19 years ago

For clarity, the reason I provided two testcases is to show that the problem doesn't occur with HTML that is closer to valid (ie. lowercase tags, double-quoted attribute values, html and body tags, etc.) than what the reporter explicitly provided.

So this would appear to be an issue with interpretation of invalid HTML, maybe? Then again, should we even try to compensate for such invalidity and leave it up to standards evangelism to get people not to write code like this?

	Hermann Schwab
	Comment 10 • 19 years ago

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060120 SeaMonkey/1.5a

Cleaned-Up testcase is nearly validating, adding title and doctype made it validating, but didn't change the behavior.

Cleaned-up testcase: shows Alert 840
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209242
view-source:https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209242

first-time alert: 
Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIDOMWindowInternal.focus]"  nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://global/content/bindings/tabbrowser.xml :: setFocus :: line 686"  data: no]

now I'm getting reproducible:
Error: [Exception... "'Permission denied to get property XULElement.accessKey' when calling method: [nsIDOMXULLabelElement::accessKey]"  nsresult: "0x8057001e (NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING)"  location: "JS frame :: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209242 :: <TOP_LEVEL> :: line 9"  data: no]
Source File: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209242
Line: 9



Reporter's testcase: (without html + body tags) 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209243
view-source:https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209243

Warning: reference to undefined property document.forms[0]
Source File: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209243
Line: 6
Error: document.forms[0] has no properties
Source File: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=209243
Line: 6

<FORM METHOD=POST>
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=CountryID VALUE=840>
</FORM>

<SCRIPT>
alert(document.forms[0].CountryID.value);
</SCRIPT>

	WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency
	Comment 11 • 19 years ago

DUP of Bug 178258

	Philip Puryear
	Comment 12 • 19 years ago

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 178258 ***