Pass value to iframe from a window

I need to send a value to an iframe.

The iframe is present within the current window. How can I achieve this?

I need to do it with javascript in the parent window that contains the iframe.

Solution 1:

First, you need to understand that you have two documents: The frame and the container (which contains the frame).

The main obstacle with manipulating the frame from the container is that the frame loads asynchronously. You can't simply access it any time, you must know when it has finished loading. So you need a trick. The usual solution is to use window.parent in the frame to get "up" (into the document which contains the iframe tag).

Now you can call any method in the container document. This method can manipulate the frame (for example call some JavaScript in the frame with the parameters you need). To know when to call the method, you have two options:

Call it from body.onload of the frame.
Put a script element as the last thing into the HTML content of the frame where you call the method of the container (left as an exercise for the reader).

So the frame looks like this:

<script>
function init() { window.parent.setUpFrame(); return true; }
function yourMethod(arg) { ... }
</script>
<body onload="init();">...</body>

And the container like this:

<script>
function setUpFrame() { 
    var frame = window.frames['frame-id'];
    frame.yourMethod('hello');
}
</script>
<body><iframe name="frame-id" src="..."></iframe></body>

Solution 2:

Depends on your specific situation, but if the iframe can be deployed after the rest of the page's loading, you can simply use a query string, a la:

<iframe src="some_page.html?somedata=5&more=bacon"></iframe>

And then somewhere in some_page.html:

<script>
var params = location.href.split('?')[1].split('&');
data = {};
for (x in params)
 {
data[params[x].split('=')[0]] = params[x].split('=')[1];
 }
</script>

Solution 3:

Here's another solution, usable if the frames are from different domains.

var frame = /*the iframe DOM object*/;
frame.contentWindow.postMessage({call:'sendValue', value: /*value*/}, /*frame domain url or '*'*/);

And in the frame itself:

window.addEventListener('message', function(event) {
    var origin = event.origin || event.originalEvent.origin; // For Chrome, the origin property is in the event.originalEvent object.
    if (origin !== /*the container's domain url*/)
        return;
    if (typeof event.data == 'object' && event.data.call=='sendValue') {
        // Do something with event.data.value;
    }
}, false);

Don't know which browsers support this, though.

Pass value to iframe from a window

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

Solution 3:

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