Form Exporter

form_exporter.js

/**
*	This is a bit of code to make it easier to turn forms into PHP Arrays
*	for use in scrapers etc.
*	It's designed to be run from the console, e.g in Firebug. Just copy
*	everything from this file into the console and hit Go. It shouldn't
*	take much to turn it into a browser extension by someone with the know how.
**/

/**
*	The arrays didn't seem to want to .concat, so I just call this
*	function for each one.
**/
function listFields(fields)
{
    var output = '';
    for (var i = 0; i < fields.length; i++) {
        // We output single quotes so names or values with a $ don't appear as variables.
        output += "<li>'" + fields[i].name + "'\t\t\t=> '" + fields[i].value + "',</li>";
    }
    return output;
}

var output = "";
// Get all the forms
var forms = document.getElementsByTagName('form');
	// We will have one bit of output for each one, so loop through each form
	for (var i = 0; i < forms.length; i++) {
        var form = forms[i];
        
		// Get the different kinds of fields. Here is where it'd be cool to keep the correct ordering of fields.
		// Also nice would be to filter out duplicate form names (i.e radio buttons) and only keep the current value)
         var inputs = form.getElementsByTagName('input');
        var selects = form.getElementsByTagName('select');
        var textarea = form.getElementsByTagName('textarea');
        var buttons = form.getElementsByTagName('button');
		
		// Make some output
        output += "<p>$" + form.id + " = array(";
        output += "<ul style='list-style-type: none'>"
        output += listFields(inputs);
        output += "</ul>";
        output += ");";
        output += "</p>";
	}
// Add a seperator so we can run it more than once without getting too confused	
output += "<hr />";
// Cheeply throw it at the bottom of the page.
document.body.innerHTML += output;