Browser extension for web form capture

• US 9,858,253 B2
• Filed: 10/30/2007
• Issued: 01/02/2018
• 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.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hillery, Nathan
• Application Number:
  US11/978,803
• Publication Number:
  US 20080184102A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,717 Days
• 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 computing device, comprising:

a web form capture logic including at least a processor, comprising;

an identification logic to;

identify whether a web page being visited by a user includes a form by analyzing metadata of the web page to determine whether the metadata indicates the presence of the form; and

identify a plurality of editable fields in the form in response to identifying that the webpage includes the form, wherein the identification logic is configured to identify the plurality of editable fields by examining hypertext markup language (HTML) code associated with the web page, and by examining a document object model (DOM) element associated with the web page;

an acquisition logic to;

automatically acquire a likely field label associated with each of the plurality of editable fields; and

acquire a field value associated with each of the plurality of editable fields through a user interface element and

accept an edit to the likely field label of each of the plurality of editable fields;

a template logic to templatize the web page being visited by the user by creating a form-fill template according to the likely field labels and the associated field values retrieved from the web page; and

a web form storage logic to store the template created from the web page.

2. The computing device of claim 1, where the 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 computing device of claim 1, where to identify that the web page includes a form, the identification logic is configured to perform one or more of, receiving a form present signal, determining that the web page includes a form identifier.

4. The computing device 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 computing device of claim 1, where the likely field label includes a field identifier, a field type, or a pointer to an instance of a field.

6. The computing device of claim 5, where the acquisition logic is configured to acquire a likely field label by:

analyzing the web page to find a label tag wrapped around a first portion of text associated with the editable field, extracting the first portion of text,

analyzing the web page to find a second text label adjacent to the editable field, extracting a second portion of text from the second text label,

analyzing the web page to find 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 one or more of a DOM identifier, the label tag, the second text label, and the third text label as the likely field label, wherein one or more of the DOM identifier, the label tag, the second text label, and the third text label are not visible on the web page.

7. The computing device of claim 5, where the acquisition logic is configured to acquire the field value by using a field access method associated with one or more of the plurality of editable fields to provide the field value.

8. The computing device of claim 1, where the acquisition logic is configured to generate a dialog box having at least one user controllable element to display the user interface element.

9. The computing device of claim 1, wherein 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 to use as a field value for each of the plurality of editable fields.

10. The computing device of claim 9, wherein the acquisition logic is configured to use the visibility rule to control whether a template associated with the web page is to be accessible to the browser extension at times including, when the web page is viewed.

11. The computing device of claim 1, where to accept an edit to the likely field label, the acquisition logic is configured to accept a value for the likely field label.

12. The computing device of claim 1, where to create a form-fill template the template logic is configured to:

create a data structure that is a template of the form on the webpage,

generate values for entries in the template using the likely field labels,

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

relate the data structure to the first web page, and

store the data structure for subsequent visits to the webpage to facilitate automatically filling the form on the webpage.

13. The computing device of claim 1, further comprises:

a form-fill logic to;

identify that a second web page visited by the user has a form to fill, where the second web page may be the same web page as the web page visited;

identify a set of templates available to participate in filling a writable field in the form to fill;

select a member of the set of templates to participate in filling the writable field; and

fill the writable field based, at least in part, on a value associated with the selected member.

14. A non-transitory computer-readable medium that stores executable instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method, the method comprising:

identifying whether a web page being visited by a user includes a form by analyzing metadata of the web page to determine whether the metadata indicates the presence of the form; and

identifying one or more editable fields within the web page in response to identifying that the webpage includes the form, wherein the identification logic is configured to identify the plurality of editable fields by examining hypertext markup language (HTML) code associated with the web page, and by examining a document object model (DOM) element associated with the web page;

automatically acquiring, from the web page, field labels associated with each of the editable fields by analyzing different text in the web page around each of the editable fields to find the field labels; and

presenting a user interface element to acquire a field value for one or more of the editable fields;

templatizing the web page being visited to create a form-fill template of the web page using the field labels and the acquired field values retrieved from the web page; and

a web form storage logic to store the template created from the web page.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein presenting the user interface element includes acquiring information for editing one or more of the field labels in the form-fill template.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein the templatizing action is initiated by a user selected option that is displayed.