Browser extension for web form fill

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9842097-B2
Application number	US-98015307-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 30, 2007
Priority date	Jan 30, 2007
Publication date	Dec 12, 2017
Grant date	Dec 12, 2017

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.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer executable instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method, the method comprising:
controlling at least a processor to determine that a web page being processed by a web browser includes a set of forms defined in a Document Object Model (DOM) associated with the web page, and to enumerate the set of forms defined in the DOM;
enumerating a set of elements for the set of forms from the web page;
acquiring a set of information for the set of elements, wherein acquiring the set of information includes acquiring information for elements that are form fields and are not of a type that indicates password, hidden, button, or image;
creating a template by aggregating the set of information from the webpage into the template;
associating the template with the web page;
providing the template to a form-fill process, wherein providing the template to the form-fill process causes the set of forms in the web page to be automatically populated by using the template on a subsequent viewing of the web page, wherein the set of elements are a set of fields that can be filled with input data; and
applying one or more field-type specific visual effects to the set of fields to be filled on a display screen, where the specific visual effects are determined, at least in part, by field-types of the fields to be filled, where the set of information includes field values for the set of elements received from a user input.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 , where acquiring the set of information includes:
upon determining that a member of the set of elements:
is not of the type password, hidden, button, or image, and 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.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 2 , 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 with a For attribute that is set to the field identifier, establishing the value of the field label as an innerText attribute of a label tag node,
proximity searching for a label starting at a 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.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 2 , 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.

5. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer executable instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method, the method comprising:
controlling a processor to determine that a web page includes at least one form, and analyzing the web page to identify a set of form fields in the web page by parsing the web page to reveal the set of form fields;
identifying a set of information for a form field in the set of form fields if the form field is not a protected form field, wherein identifying a protected form field includes determining whether the form field is in a protected list and determining whether a field type for the form field is one of, password, hidden, button, image, read-only, or disabled, where protected form fields include fields that are not to be included in a template based on a security policy;
creating a template for the at least one form from the web page using the set of information by aggregating the set of information for the form field with information for the set of form fields in the web page into the template; and
storing the template in a data structure associated with the web page;
applying one or more field-type specific visual effects to the set of form fields to be filled on a display screen, where the specific visual effects are determined, at least in part, by field-types of the set of form fields to be filled; and
providing the template to a form fill process to cause the template to be automatically filled on a subsequent visit to the web page.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , where the set of information includes a field type, a field identifier, a field pointer, a field value that is populated from a user input, and a field label, and where the at least one form is defined in a Document Object Model (DOM) associated with the web page.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 6 , where identifying the set of information includes identifying the field label by:
determining whether the field identifier is associated with an HTML label tag with an attribute set to the field identifier and using the value of an innerText attribute of the HTML label tag as the field label; and
searching proximate to the form field for text that identifies the field label upon determining that the field identifier is not associated with an HTML label tag.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , where the analyzing includes analyzing a set of frames in the web page.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , where identifying a field value for the form field includes using an access method associated with the field type for the form field, where:
identifying the field value for a text box field type includes reading a value attribute of the text box,
identifying the field value for a text area field type includes reading a value attribute of the text area,
identifying the field value for a radio button field type includes:
enumerating a set of options for the radio button field type,
determining a value that is selected from the set of options,

identifying the field value for a check box field type includes:
determining a field value of a checked attribute,

identifying the field value for a select field type includes:
determining a mode for the select field type, the mode being one of a multi-mode and a single mode, and
returning a field value of the select field type from an associated data structure.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , comprising:
applying one or more specific visual effects for a field type to the form field to be filled on a display screen, where the specific visual effects are determined, at least in part, by a field-type of a form field to be filled.

Assignees

• Selig Roy A
• Oracle Int Corp

Inventors

• Selig Roy A

Classifications

• G06F40/174 Primary

  Form filling; Merging · CPC title

• G06F17/243 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic