Is is possible to read form values from a page within an Iframe?

Question

I'm currently investigating whether it's possible to write a html/aspx page which contains an iframe which can read values entered in text boxes etc.

Some of the knowns are:

• This will only need to work with IE 7/8
• I have no control over the pages contained in the iframe
• The pages in the iframe are from a different domain

I've tried this with a nested page from the same domain and it works fine; I can read the value of a textbox and display it in a messagebox fine. When I try it with a page from a different domain I get an 'Access Denied' error from IE.

For reference the code I'm using to access form elements of the page in the iframe is as follows:

var iframe = document.getElementById("myIframe");
var textBox = iframe.contentWindow.document.getElementById("txtTest");
alert(textBox.value);

I understand that this may not be possible, by design, for security reasons but just want to check first that there's no workarounds before abandoning this idea.

Answer 1

AFAIK for security reasons you cannot manipulate the parent DOM from an IFrame hosted on a different domain.

Answer 2

No you can access iframes only if they are in the same domain of the main page.