[whatwg] rel/rev for <form> ?

[Mike Dierken]

> 
> >     * Do you think that be able to use other HTTP methods, other than 
> > GET, is important?
> 
> In this case, not. The way I see it, web crawlers, 
> extensions, user scripts, user agents and the like can use 
> the URIs of any resource, based on the REL. For example, 
> rel="author": this *should* give an URI to the author of the 
> web page, but how would this work with a <form>? Would you 
> require it to use POST or another method? Forms are more 
> complex than simple links, they require user interaction 
> (fill the fields and most likely a JavaScript on the page 
> that validates the values).
> 
> Also, forms are not for "general availability", in the sense 
> of ... web crawlers should *not* try to submit them (that's 
> what the bad spam bots do when trying to post spam comments).

I actually would find it interesting and useful for a the inputs of a form
to have a 'class' attribute that indicates the meaning of the parameter -
and let a web crawler find all the forms that use a certain class of input
parameters.

For example:
 <form action="citizens.cgi" method='GET'>
  <input name='the-ssn' class='gov.us/identity/individual-tax-id'
type='text' />
 </form>

 <form action="houses-for-sale.cgi" method='GET'>
  <input name='zip' class='gov.us/postal/zip-code' type='text' />
 </form>


It would be cool to have a service that discovered these forms and then
provided a search of all the URIs that accepted social-security-number, or
zip-code.