I have a case where the user must select items from a basket and use them with different forms.

Example:
Some items in this form
  • Item:
  • Item:
  • Item:
  • Item:
Another form here
(I will create here hidden fields from the the checkboxes in the first box)

I will show you how to use the checked boxes from the first form with the submit action in the second form

It would be easy if the form could be one – less support.

I am starting with those two forms

  • Helper form – Form with checkboxes
  • Action form – the form that will do the real action based on the selected items in the helper form

Here is how it looks the helper form. All the checkboxes are tagged with the class=”selectable”. Here is rails example but you can implement it pure html.

<%= check_box_tag('selected[]', true, image.selected?, :class=>"selectable") %>

Then we can select all the checkboxes with this javascript.

var make_to_hidden = $$('input.selectable');

Put on your action form an id so we can access it easy in this case:

<form id="mail_form" onsubmit="import_selected_basket()">
	...
</form>

Lets add those checkboxes from the first form to the real action form with this javascript function

      function import_selected_basket() {
          var make_to_hidden = $$('input.selectable');
          make_to_hidden.each(function(item) {
              if (item.checked) {
                var new_item = new Element('input', { 'type': 'hidden', name: item.name, value: item.value })
                $('mail_form').appendChild(new_item)
              }
          });