Browser extension for web form capture

• US 20080184102A1
• Filed: 10/30/2007
• Published: 07/31/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Selig, Roy A.
• Granted Patent: US 9,858,253 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging

Abstract

Methods and other embodiments associated with a web browser extension are described. One example browser extension includes a web form capture logic that identifies a web page that includes a form and an editable field on the form. The capture logic may acquire information about the field and about the form. This acquisition may include interacting with a user through a graphical user interface. The browser extension may also include a template logic to create a form-fill template based on the acquired information and a web form storage logic to store the template. The template may be referenced when a subsequent web page view involves a form-fill operation.

Claims

1. A browser extension, comprising:

a web form capture logic, comprising;

an identification logic to;

identify that a first web page includes a form; and

identify an editable field associated with the form;

an acquisition logic to;

acquire a first set of information associated with the editable field; and

present a user interface element to acquire a second set of information associated with the editable field and to accept an edit to the first set of information; and

a template logic to create a form-fill template based, at least in part, on the first set of information and the second set of information; and

a web form storage logic to store the template.

2. The browser extension of claim 1, where the first web page is one of, a single web page, a web page that is part of another web page, a web page having multiple forms, and a web page having a set of frames.

3. The browser extension of claim 1, where to identify that the first web page includes a form, the identification logic is configured to perform one or more of, receiving a form present signal, determining that the first web page includes a form identifier, and determining that metadata associated with the first web page indicates the presence of a form.

4. The browser extension of claim 1, where processing to be performed by the web form capture logic is invoked in response to a templatize action being selected from a user interface.

5. The browser extension of claim 1, where to identify an editable field associated with the form, the identification logic is configured to identify structure relevant to a form-based task by examining one or more of, hypertext markup language (HTML) associated with the first web page, and a document object model (DOM) element associated with the first web page.

6. The browser extension of claim 1, where the first set of information includes a field identifier, a field type, a field label, a pointer to an instance of a field, or a field value.

7. The browser extension of claim 6, where the acquisition logic is configured to acquire a field label by, one or more of:

finding a label tag wrapped around a first portion of text associated with the editable field, extracting the first portion of text, and establishing the first portion of extracted text as the field label;

finding a second text label adjacent to the editable field, extracting a second portion of text from the second text label, and establishing the field label as the second portion of extracted text;

finding a third text label within a threshold distance of the editable field, extracting a third portion of text from the third text label, and establishing the field label as the third portion of extracted text; and

establishing the DOM identifier as the field label.

8. The browser extension of claim 6, where the acquisition logic is configured to acquire a field value by invoking a field access method associated with the editable field.

9. The browser extension of claim 1, where to present the user interface element, the acquisition logic is configured to present a dialog box having at least one user controllable element.

10. The browser extension of claim 1, where to acquire the second set of information, the acquisition logic is configured to acquire one or more of, a default value for a field in the form, a formula for populating a field in the form, a visibility rule for a template related to the form, a title for the template, a value for a first indicator that controls whether the editable field is to be included in a template associated with the form, and a value for a second indicator that controls whether the editable field is to be user-editable.

11. The browser extension of claim 10, where the visibility rule controls whether a template associated with the first web page is to be accessible to the browser extension at times including, when the first web page is viewed, when a web page in the same domain as the first web page is viewed, when a web page associated with an enterprise application associated with the first web page is viewed, when a web page belonging to the enterprise that owns the first web page is viewed, and when any web page is viewed.

12. The browser extension of claim 6, where to accept an edit to the first set of information, the acquisition logic is configured to accept one or more of, a value for the field label, and a value for the field value.

13. The browser extension of claim 1, where to create a form-fill template the template logic is configured to:

create a data structure,

establish values for one or more entries in the data structure based, at least in part, on the first set of information,

establish values for one or more metadata entries associated with the data structure based, at least in part, on the second set of information,

relate the data structure to the first web page, and

store the data structure.

14. The browser extension of claim 1, the browser extension is embodied in a computer-readable medium.

15. A system, comprising:

means for automatically determining the structure of a web page by referencing one or more of, HTML associated with the web page, and a DOM element associated with the web page;

means for associating a selected form field on the web page with a template that can be populated, stored, and retrieved;

means for relating the template to the web page;

means for storing the template; and

means for selectively retrieving the template upon determining that a second web page has a writable form to fill, the writable form being related to the template.

16. A method, comprising:

accessing a data structure configured to facilitate accessing templates associated with web pages to be processed by a web browser;

upon determining that a web page has a set of forms defined in a DOM associated with the web page, enumerating the set of forms defined in the DOM;

upon determining that a form in the set of forms has at least one element, enumerating a set of elements for the form;

acquiring a set of information for a member of the set of elements;

aggregating the set of information into a template;

associating the template with the web page; and

associating the template with the data structure.

17. The method of claim 16, where the data structure is a global associative array.

18. The method of claim 16, including, enumerating a set of frames in the frameset and processing the enumerated set of frames individually according to the method of claim 28 upon determining that a web page includes a frameset.

19. The method of claim 16, including, enumerating a set of iframes and processing the enumerated set of iframes individually according to the method of claim 16 upon determining that the DOM associated with a web page includes an iframe.

20. The method of claim 16, where acquiring the set of information for the member of the set of elements includes:

upon determining that the member;

is not of the type password, hidden, button, or image,

is not in a protected list, and

does not have a read-only attribute or disabled attribute, then;

acquiring a field identifier for the member,

acquiring a field type for the member,

acquiring a pointer to the instance of the member,

acquiring a field value for the member using an access method associated with the field type for the member, and

acquiring a field label for the member.

21. The method of claim 20, where acquiring the field label for the member includes one or more of:

upon determining that the field identifier is associated with an HTML label tag whose For attribute is set to the field identifier, establishing the value of the field label as the innerText attribute of the label tag node,

proximity searching for a label starting at the parent node of the member and reading one or more of, text that precedes the member, and text that succeeds the member, and

establishing the field identifier as the field label.

22. The method of claim 16, where:

acquiring the field value for a text box includes reading the value attribute of the text box,

acquiring the field value for a text area includes reading the value attribute of the text area,

acquiring the field value for a set of radio buttons includes;

determining the group name of a set of radio buttons,

enumerating the members of the set of radio buttons, and

determining a selected value for the set of radio buttons,

acquiring the field value for a check box includes determining the value of a checked attribute for the check box,

acquiring the field value for a select field includes;

determining a mode for the select field, the mode being one of a multi-mode and a single mode, and

returning the value of the selected field from an associated data structure.