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Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 9:41 PM

In woodworking, metalworking, and other crafts where exact reproduction of a given piece is crucial, a common tool is a “jig.” A jig is effectively a template for creating a copy. For example, when a door key is duplicated, the cutting machine uses the existing key as a jig, tracing the hills and valleys on its edge to produce an identical version.

Along the same line, when developing a web application or just a simple page, HTML forms require that data be typed in and submitted. This process will repeat as the server-side code is refined, and typing the same data over and over gets old as soon as the second iteration. “Don’t Repeat Yourself”, or “DRY”, is a common philosophy for writing better code, and should extend to testing your forms, as well.

Save your typing for code.

Form Jig is a small Firefox extension for replicating HTML form data and server-side code. To use it, fill out a form on a page, click the red Capture button in your Firefox status bar, then submit the form. Upon returning for further testing, click the green Replay triangle to populate the form just as you left it. Form data is kept around until the current Firefox window is closed, and can be used between tabs.

Suggestions are welcomed, and bug reports will be attended to.

6/8/08 Update v1.0.1
Fixed a bug related to checkboxes and radio buttons. The updated plugin should appear on addons.mozilla.org shortly (linked via the above button), but still hasn’t passed Mozilla’s “nomination” for public consumption.

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