Copying from form to form in jQuery

Question

I had a requirement to copy all fields from one form to another similar form. So instead of copying field by field I wrote a routine, form2form, using jQuery.

Answer 1

> Is there a built in function so I didn't need this?

Not really. There's clone(), but that's more for copying an element to another spot in the DOM. You need to populate a second form.

> Can I pass form objects rather then the form name as a text?

Yes:

function form2form(formA, formB) {
    $(':input[name]', formA).each(function() {
        $('[name=' + $(this).attr('name') +']', formB).val($(this).val())
    })
}

You can make it a plugin too!

(function($) {
    $.fn.copyNamedTo = function(other) {
        return this.each(function() {
            $(':input[name]', this).each(function() {
                $('[name=' + $(this).attr('name') +']', other).val($(this).val())
            })  
        })
    }
}(jQuery))

ps the ":input" pseudo selector does not skip radio or select inputs. It explicitly includes select and input elements (at least in 1.3.2), of which radio buttons are a part of.

Answer 2

I had to add this to the plugin to get it to operate checkboxes.

$('[name=' + $(this).attr('name') +']', other).attr("checked", $(this).attr("checked"));