Last night, I did a quick spike to try and implement username/password autocomplete in my GXT application. By "autocomplete", I don't mean Ajax-style autocomplete, but rather browser-based autocomplete. The best information I found on this via google is in the following post:
http://osdir.com/ml/GoogleWebToolkit/2009-04/msg01838.html
I didn't use this technique because I'm using GXT and didn't want to lose the look-and-feel of my login form.
I was successful in getting everything to work in Firefox (it populates both the username and password). In IE, it only populates the username, not the password. In Safari/Chrome, it doesn't work at all.
Here's how I did it:
- Created a hidden HTML form on my HTML page that embeds GWT.
<form method="post" action="javascript:void(0)" style="display: none">
<input type="text" id="username" name="username" value=""/>
<input type="password" id="password" name="password" value=""/>
<input type="submit" value="Login" id="login"/>
</form>
- When a user clicks on the "Login" button in my GWT application, populate the fields in this hidden form and "click" on the Login button (which will do nothing since the action="javascript:void(0)".
// Set the hidden fields to trigger the browser to remember
DOM.getElementById("username").setAttribute("value", username.getValue());
DOM.getElementById("password").setAttribute("value", password.getValue());
clickFormLogin();
...
public static native void clickFormLogin() /*-{
$doc.getElementById("login").click();
}-*/;
This works in Firefox 3.5 and prompts me to save the user/pass at the top of the screen. I believe I know why this doesn't work in Safari/Chrome and that's because the form's action doesn't go anywhere and the form is not submitted. If I change the action to be an actual URL and show the form, clicking on the form's Login button will save it in those browsers.
After typing this up as a question here, I got to thinking this might make a good blog post. Therefore, I copied everything and added a bit to my blog:
http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/browser_based_username_password_autocomplete
Summary and Question
While I'm glad I got it working in Firefox, I'm disappointed with IE's lack of password autocompletion. More than anything, I can't help but think there's a way to make this work in WebKit-based browsers.
Anyone know how to implement cross-browser username/password autocomplete in GWT (specifically GXT)?