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. It also allows
the form name to be held in a variable or built dynamically.
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
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