
Show HN: FormFiller – A JavaScript bookmarklet for repopulating forms - mikeaag
https://formfillerjs.com/
======
ablativenotion
This seemed familiar to me and I recalled this:
[http://www.benjaminkeen.com/open-source-projects/smaller-
pro...](http://www.benjaminkeen.com/open-source-projects/smaller-
projects/form-filler-bookmarklet/)

It is the first hit in Google for 'form filler bookmarklet'.

Any noteworthy differences between yours and that? (Honest question, no snark
intended.)

~~~
mikeaag
I'll be honest, once I decided I needed a solution, and that browser
extensions weren't an option, I didn't really try that hard to find a bookmark
alternative as I figured I could create something to do the job fairly
quickly.

The first version of FormFiller was written in about 30 minutes over the
course of 2 lunch breaks and it did what I needed it to (though not very
elegantly. It send the generated JS bookmark code to a php script which saved
it to a file which was then loaded in the created bookmarklet. Caused issues
with https though :( )

Also, because I originally made it for use at my day job, there were some
special use cases that I hard coded in.

Once I'd got to that point, the thought of looking for existing solutions
didn't cross my mind.

Now, to answer your question, having looked at the project you linked, I would
say that there are only a few differences (at the moment).

1) While they are both open source, FormFiller is on GitHub and therefore I
feel it's a bit easier for people to access the source code and potentially
contribute.

2) The FormFiller save bookmarklet loads the code from
[https://rawgit.com/wearecontrast/FormFiller/master/src/FormF...](https://rawgit.com/wearecontrast/FormFiller/master/src/FormFiller.js).
What this means is that when I update FormFiller with new features, everyone
gets upgraded without having to create a new Save bookmarklet. (This doesn't
update the generated bookmarklets though. Anyone wanted to take advantage of a
new feature can just use their current bookmarklet to populate the form, then
save again using the automatically updated Save bookmarklet. The benefit of
this is, if your generated bookmarklet works now, it will always work
regardless of any features added/removed in the future)

3) When you click the FormFiller bookmark to save a form, you are presented
with a modal window. Currently, the only thing you can do on this window is
change the name of the link (and thus the name of your bookmark). The plan
going forward is to re-implement some of the functionality I need at work.
This means being able to select certain fields to have random values inserted,
and also having fields have calculated values inserted. for example, random
characters in the name fields, and always inserting the current date (or +3
days) into a date field.

4) The only other difference I could see was that FormFiller does not split up
the generated bookmarklets for multiple forms on the page. I'm not sure if
this is better or worse though?

Thanks for the comment and I hope that gives a bit of insight into where I'm
planning on taking FormFiller. If you end up giving FormFiller a try then
feedback is always appreciated :D

Cheers, Mike

~~~
ablativenotion
Fair enough. I haven't tested either one recently, but here is a dump of some
past notes I took about improving the other one, as food for thought.

* put focus on submit button

* offer option during creation to auto-sumbit the form. trigger click event on the submit button.

* detect wrong form and alert user something like "This form does not seem to be the same form that was saved. Try anyway?"

~~~
mikeaag
Thanks for the notes, will definitely take them on board. Auto-submit is
probably going to be the first feature that gets added. I currently have a
separate bookmarklet for it, but it's much easier if it's just part of the
generated bookmarklet.

------
ForHackernews
Sounds similar to [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-
form-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-
recovery/)

~~~
mikeaag
They are indeed similar, but work a little differently. One of the main
requirements I had when making FormFiller was it needed to be cross browser.
The reason for this is that at work I have to use Firefox, and our testers
prefer IE, but at home I use chrome. I wanted to create something which I
could use on any browser, so unfortunately browser extensions were out of the
question :(

Lazarus does look interesting though.

------
mikeaag
Hey all,

I'm Mike, one of the guys behind FormFiller.

We made FormFiller to scratch our own itch, but thought others might find some
use out of it as well. (You can read more about how it came about at
[http://wearecontrast.com/2015/07/month-5-introducing-
formfil...](http://wearecontrast.com/2015/07/month-5-introducing-formfiller/))

Would love to hear your feedback on how we can make it better.

Cheers, Mike :D

~~~
hello_there_you
You should make a really dramatic video where everyone in the team is
presented in a chair, cutting between closeups of their face and details of
FormFiller's user interface, while telling the story of the product, how it
came about, how design is what really matters the most and how you will change
the world with it. Jokes aside, cool idea :)

~~~
mikeaag
HAHA yes!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5UbCRrlmlE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5UbCRrlmlE)

