System Template

formdata()

Access parameters passed to the Presentation Page from a remote Web Browser.

Syntax

MetaData Object = rb.page.formdata(interpretCharset)

Parameters

The 'formdata' method takes 1 parameter:

Results

The method creates a JavaScript object. The object contains a JavaScript property for each of the parameters passed to the page from the browser. The Whitebeam System Template transparently extracts parameter values from both GET and POST methods - no special behaviour is required from the presentation page.

Each parameter is represented in the returned object as a named parameter. The name of the property matches the name of the parameter passed from the end-users browser. The property is represented by either a string or an array according to the following rules:

• If the name of the parameter ends with [] then the brackets are removed from the name and the parameter is always represented as an array. For example a parameter called choices[] will be mapped to a JavaScript property choices that will be an array of one or more elements
• Where the name of the parameter does em end with [] Whitebeam will create a string property if there is exactly one parameter with that name, otherwise it will create an array containing each of the values of that parameter

By default the system assumes the text in the post data is LATIN-1 characters.

If the optional interpretCharset parameter is specified and is true then Whitebeam will interrogate the HTTP headers to determine the character set. If UTF-8 is specified then the UTF-8 characters are correctly expanded into JavaScript.

NOTE: interpretCharset should probably be set to true for all cases and this may become the default in future Whitebeam Whitebeam releases.

Remarks

The will decode parameters passed on the URL using standard HTTP encoding. It will also successfully decode parameters from POST methods provided the HTTP Content-Type header has a value of application/x-www-form-urlencoded. This is the usual encoding for HTTP forms. If this processing is insufficient then the application can use the rb.page.postdata method to process the raw encoded post data.

Example

var parameters = rb.page.formdata();

rb.page.write("<table>\n");
for (aParameter in parameters) {
   rb.page.write("<tr><td>Parameter Name="+aParameter+"</td><td>Cookie Value="+parameters[aParameter]+"</td></tr>\n");
}
rb.page.write("</table>\n");