TUAW Responds: Reader Requests iPhone Javascript Pasting

Phillip,

There is a "Personal Note..." bookmarklet that does what you mentioned. If you use that, and the variable name it uses is "iJ62mQcy" (see http://edmullen.net/Mozilla/bookmarklets.txt for more) then here is a version of iPastelet that will allow you to paste that text into form fields (after only typing it once):
javascript:var%20i,j,holdorig;var%20replacetext=iJ62mQcy;for%20(i=0;i%3Cdocument.forms.length;i++)for%20(j=0;j%3Cdocument.forms[i].elements.length;j++){if%20(document.forms[i].elements[j].type==%22text%22){holdorig=document.forms[i].elements[j].value;document.forms[i].elements[j].value=replacetext;var%20answer=confirm(%22Paste%20Here?%22);if%20(answer)%20break;%20else%20document.forms[i].elements[j].value=holdorig;}}

I thought this was pretty cool, so I hacked up a little web page with a form. Just enter the text you want the bookmarklet to paste and the name you want to give the bookmarklet. Very handy for making a little scrapbook of common web form text- email addresses, host and server names, etc. The form is at:
http://mobilemind.net/iphone/ipastelet.html

Thanks TUAW and thanks Erica.

I tried this out and it works just fine on safari on my pc, but when I sync it to my iPhone it doesn't do anything. I don't get any of the dialog boxes. I will disclaim that I am running safari on windows, not a mac. I have had a lot of problems with bookmarklets that are too large for safari on the pc, but they typically don't work on safari on the pc.

Any thoughts?

The iPhone uses cookies, doesn't it? If so, is it possible for a "copy" bookmarklet to store selected text to a "clipboard" cookie, and a "paste" bookmarklet to iterate through all the fields and paste from the clipboard cookie? Just a random thought which probably won't produce much fruit anyway...

Thanks Erica! This will undoubtedly prove useful for pasting info like addresses, etc. into web forms. I'll be setting a few of these up for sure.

If anyone has a good repository of bookmarklets for the iphone, please post up. I've found a ton I like, but in particular I'm looking for one that'll allow you to use a search engine that requires the POST method. All the usual ones, like dictionary.com and wikipedia, etc, all use the GET method (putting strings in the URL). I haven't found a single one that gets around the POST requirement.

If your pasted text includes special characters (as in a URL), do you have to escape them to use this script?