I have a form that is opening a new window on submit:
<form id="form-id" target="_blank">
I want to access the newly created window via javascript, without manually generating a unique name for target, and without resorting to an alternative method for opening the window.
It seems like there has to be an easy way of doing this but I wasn't able to find one that will work in my specific situation.
I have a form that is opening a new window on submit:
<form id="form-id" target="_blank">
I want to access the newly created window via javascript, without manually generating a unique name for target, and without resorting to an alternative method for opening the window.
It seems like there has to be an easy way of doing this but I wasn't able to find one that will work in my specific situation.
Share Improve this question edited Sep 3, 2013 at 17:45 Sergio 28.8k11 gold badges89 silver badges132 bronze badges asked Nov 26, 2012 at 17:15 jtrickjtrick 1,36918 silver badges23 bronze badges 1- 1 Why would someone vote this question down? At least a ment would be helpful. Don't assume that I haven't looked into this; and just because you don't understand the circumstances leading to the question, that does not reflect the reasonableness of asking it. – jtrick Commented Nov 26, 2012 at 17:34
3 Answers
Reset to default 5I'm not 100% sure this works in all browsers, but Firefox seems to set window.opener when a target attribute on an <a> or <form> causes a new window to open. Thus, you can go the other direction and find the original window from the new one (assuming you control the code there; if not, well I can't imagine you could do much with the window reference anyway).
Of course one of the things the code in the new window can do is call a function in the old window, passing in its own window reference.
Thus, specifically, if you have:
<form action=whatever target=_blank>
on the original page, then the page that ends up in the newly-opened window can do this:
<head>
<script>
if (window.opener) {
window.opener.announceWindow( window );
}
</script>
That assumes announceWindow() is a function on the original page, something perhaps like:
function announceWindow( win ) {
// do stuff with "win", a newly-opened window
}
Instead of _blank then you can use name your new window.
<form id="form-id" target="newName">
Then you can use it in JS by doing:
var newWindow = window.open(null, 'newName');
Adding to the accepted answer by @Pointy:
In 2023, at least in Chrome when a window is open through <form target="_blank"> the window.opener is undefined in the new window.
I had to add rel="opener" to the opening form and after that, the window.opener is defined and can be used as advised by the accepted answer.
<form ... target="_blank" rel="opener">