Why use a textarea when you can just do this?

bullrider718

Whenever something breaks in a dorm at my school we have to fill out one of these online work order forms (really just a formmail as evidenced by the results page). When I got to the description part, I realized that my school found an input method FAR superior to any textarea tag:

WTF

The best part is, to get to this page we've been informed that we have to search for it on a search engine first... no link to it on the school's web site!

benryves

The %s in the title (format string?) doesn't bode too well either.

Carnildo

I bet the original paper version of this form had six blank lines for describing the work needed.

dtech

@benryves said:

The %s in the title (format string?) doesn't bode too well either.

Well, could be just for some switch statement. But if you're "lucky", I wonder what this would do: ...edu:83/info/INDEX?toname=INDEX

And then ofcourse use that to include the really interesting things...

burntfuse

I'm guessing this is the result of some kind of "form engine" - the programmer decided "hey, I'll just have a bit of code that takes an array/file/whatever with a list of form fields and generates the HTML!" Then of course, they didn't allow for anything besides one-line text boxes...

Or it could be something completely different.

bullrider718

@dtech said:

@benryves said:

The %s in the title (format string?) doesn't bode too well either.

Well, could be just for some switch statement. But if you're "lucky", I wonder what this would do: ...edu:83/info/INDEX?toname=INDEX

And then ofcourse use that to include the really interesting things...

So i gave this a try and it turns out that this entire system is just one huge old-school/flat file bulletin board (the oldest 'post' dates back to '92) of various formmails and other information that in no way belong on a discussion board. There are some interesting "posts" such as WWW and DELETE, but unfortunately I get 404s when trying to explore these further :(. Nonetheless, an amazingly designed system.

Finally, a non-javascript solution to the fact that maxlength isn't a valid attribute for textareas.

maybe it's a screenscraped piece of lazy legacy crap?

Then again, maybe not.

dhromed

I'm guessing this online form requires 100% reliable compatibility (barring firebuggers and POST crafters) with the paper version which I hypothesize is still in heavy use.

Was the font used in the fields fixed-width as well?

tdb

I wonder what sort of database is behind this. Perhaps something similar to this:

CREATE TABLE work_orders (requestor VARCHAR(40), ... description_line1 VARCHAR(80), description_line2 VARCHAR(80), description_line3 VARCHAR(80), ...)

bullrider718

@tdb said:

I wonder what sort of database is behind this. Perhaps something similar to this:

CREATE TABLE work_orders (requestor VARCHAR(40), ... description_line1 VARCHAR(80), description_line2 VARCHAR(80), description_line3 VARCHAR(80), ...)

Here's your "database": (note they didnt even bother renaming the last 5 of the description fields)

----- Original Message -----
From: "FSWork" <>
To: "" <>
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2008 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: Form: FSWORK from

> -->   This request was turned over to the maintenance man.
>
> --
>
> --- ------- ------- wrote:
>> Name       :--
>> Dept       :
>> Phone      :--
>> Account    :
>> Building   :Campus Square
>> Room_#     :--
>> Description:The light in our bathroom does not turn on as of this
>> morning.
>> field_6    :
>> field_7    :
>> field_8    :
>> field_9    :
>> field_10   :
>>
>

dtech

@bullrider718 said:

@tdb said:
I wonder what sort of database is behind this. Perhaps something similar to this:

CREATE TABLE work_orders (requestor VARCHAR(40), ... description_line1 VARCHAR(80), description_line2 VARCHAR(80), description_line3 VARCHAR(80), ...)

Here's your "database": (note they didnt even bother renaming the last 5 of the description fields)

----- Original Message -----
From: "FSWork" <>
To: "" <>
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2008 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: Form: FSWORK from

> --> This request was turned over to the maintenance man.
....

Is it HTML mail? Then you should try:

<script type="text/javascript">
for(;;;){
    alert("Your system has been hacked.\nOne file will be deleted everytime you click the 'OK' button.");
}</script>

Should result in some interesting phone calls to the helpdesk of your school ;)

halcyon1234

Reminds me of the survey at talktowendys.com. It's one of those "give us your receipt number, we'll give you a survey and a prize" sites. Except you enter your receipt number like this:

And the error checking is no better, either:

If language=english AND 1st box is empty, say "box is empty"
If language=spanish AND 1st box is empty, say "el boxo is emptio"
If lanague=french AND 1st box is empty, say "FR--The box is empty"

Repeat for each 8 boxes. 3 languages x 8 boxes = 24 checks to see if there's a missing digit. And yes, the French codes report the error in English, with a FR appended to it.

And then to check the value of the (combined?) 8 digit code:


function iVal(val) 
{  
var sTmp=""; 
var sAllow="1234567890"
for(i=0;i<val.length;i++) 
   if(sAllow.indexOf(val.charAt(i))>=0) 
           sTmp+=val.charAt(i);
return sTmp;
}

Regex? Nah. At they didn't write eight separate blocks for this. (Or 24 blocks, because an English 1 is different than a French 1....)

@halcyon1234 said:

If language=spanish AND 1st box is empty, say "el boxo is emptio"

For the sake of my keyboard and screen, I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read this.