I have a simple page that has some iframe sections (to display RSS links). How can I apply the same CSS format from the main page to the page displayed in the iframe?
28 Answers
Edit: This does not work cross domain unless the appropriate CORS header is set.
There are two different things here: the style of the iframe block and the style of the page embedded in the iframe. You can set the style of the iframe block the usual way:
<iframe name="iframe1" id="iframe1" src="empty.htm"
frameborder="0" border="0" cellspacing="0"
style="border-style: none;width: 100%; height: 120px;"></iframe>
The style of the page embedded in the iframe must be either set by including it in the child page:
<link type="text/css" rel="Stylesheet" href="Style/simple.css" />
Or it can be loaded from the parent page with Javascript:
var cssLink = document.createElement("link");
cssLink.href = "style.css";
cssLink.rel = "stylesheet";
cssLink.type = "text/css";
frames['iframe1'].document.head.appendChild(cssLink);
If the content of the iframe is not completely under your control or you want to access the content from different pages with different styles you could try manipulating it using JavaScript.
var frm = frames['frame'].document;
var otherhead = frm.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];
var link = frm.createElement("link");
link.setAttribute("rel", "stylesheet");
link.setAttribute("type", "text/css");
link.setAttribute("href", "style.css");
otherhead.appendChild(link);
Note that depending on what browser you use this might only work on pages served from the same domain.
If you control the page in the iframe, as hangy said, the easiest approach is to create a shared CSS file with common styles, then just link to it from your html pages.
Otherwise it is unlikely you will be able to dynamically change the style of a page from an external page in your iframe. This is because browsers have tightened the security on cross frame dom scripting due to possible misuse for spoofing and other hacks.
This tutorial may provide you with more information on scripting iframes in general. About cross frame scripting explains the security restrictions from the IE perspective.
An iframe is universally handled like a different HTML page by most browsers. If you want to apply the same stylesheet to the content of the iframe, just reference it from the pages used in there.
The above with a little change works:
var cssLink = document.createElement("link")
cssLink.href = "pFstylesEditor.css";
cssLink.rel = "stylesheet";
cssLink.type = "text/css";
//Instead of this
//frames['frame1'].document.body.appendChild(cssLink);
//Do this
var doc=document.getElementById("edit").contentWindow.document;
//If you are doing any dynamic writing do that first
doc.open();
doc.write(myData);
doc.close();
//Then append child
doc.body.appendChild(cssLink);
Works fine with ff3 and ie8 at least
If you want to reuse CSS and JavaScript from the main page maybe you should consider replacing <IFRAME> with a Ajax loaded content. This is more SEO friendly now when search bots are able to execute JavaScript.
This is jQuery example that includes another html page into your document. This is much more SEO friendly than iframe. In order to be sure that the bots are not indexing the included page just add it to disallow in robots.txt
<html>
<header>
<script src="/js/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</header>
<body>
<div id='include-from-outside'></div>
<script type='text/javascript'>
$('#include-from-outside').load('http://example.com/included.html');
</script>
</body>
</html>
You could also include jQuery directly from Google: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/documentation/ - this means optional auto-inclusion of newer versions and some significant speed increase. Also, means that you have to trust them for delivering you just the jQuery ;)
As many answers are written for the same domains, I'll write how to do this in cross domains.
First, you need to know the Post Message API. We need a messenger to communicate between two windows.
Here's a messenger I created.
/**
* Creates a messenger between two windows
* which have two different domains
*/
class CrossMessenger {
/**
*
* @param {object} otherWindow - window object of the other
* @param {string} targetDomain - domain of the other window
* @param {object} eventHandlers - all the event names and handlers
*/
constructor(otherWindow, targetDomain, eventHandlers = {}) {
this.otherWindow = otherWindow;
this.targetDomain = targetDomain;
this.eventHandlers = eventHandlers;
window.addEventListener("message", (e) => this.receive.call(this, e));
}
post(event, data) {
try {
// data obj should have event name
var json = JSON.stringify({
event,
data
});
this.otherWindow.postMessage(json, this.targetDomain);
} catch (e) {}
}
receive(e) {
var json;
try {
json = JSON.parse(e.data ? e.data : "{}");
} catch (e) {
return;
}
var eventName = json.event,
data = json.data;
if (e.origin !== this.targetDomain)
return;
if (typeof this.eventHandlers[eventName] === "function")
this.eventHandlers[eventName](data);
}
}
Using this in two windows to communicate can solve your problem.
In the main windows,
var msger = new CrossMessenger(iframe.contentWindow, "https://iframe.s.domain");
var cssContent = Array.prototype.map.call(yourCSSElement.sheet.cssRules, css_text).join('\n');
msger.post("cssContent", {
css: cssContent
})
Then, receive the event from the Iframe.
In the Iframe:
var msger = new CrossMessenger(window.parent, "https://parent.window.domain", {
cssContent: (data) => {
var cssElem = document.createElement("style");
cssElem.innerHTML = data.css;
document.head.appendChild(cssElem);
}
})
See the Complete Javascript and Iframes tutorial for more details.
You will not be able to style the contents of the iframe this way. My suggestion would be to use serverside scripting (PHP, ASP, or a Perl script) or find an online service that will convert a feed to JavaScript code. The only other way to do it would be if you can do a serverside include.
There is a wonderful script that replaces a node with an iframe version of itself. CodePen Demo
Usage Examples:
// Single node
var component = document.querySelector('.component');
var iframe = iframify(component);
// Collection of nodes
var components = document.querySelectorAll('.component');
var iframes = Array.prototype.map.call(components, function (component) {
return iframify(component, {});
});
// With options
var component = document.querySelector('.component');
var iframe = iframify(component, {
headExtra: '<style>.component { color: red; }</style>',
metaViewport: '<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">'
});
This is how I'm doing in production. It's worth bearing in mind that if the iframe belongs to other website, it will trigger the CORS error and will not work.
var $iframe = document.querySelector(`iframe`);
var doc = $iframe.contentDocument;
var style = doc.createElement("style");
style.textContent = `*{display:none!important;}`;
doc.head.append(style);
In some cases you may also want to attach a load event to the iframe:
var $iframe = document.querySelector(`iframe`);
$iframe.addEventListener("load", function() {
var doc = $iframe.contentDocument;
var style = doc.createElement("style");
style.textContent = `*{display:none!important;}`;
doc.head.append(style);
});
This is just a concept, but don't implement this without security checks and filtering! Otherwise script could hack your site!
Answer: if you control target site, you can setup the receiver script like:
1) set the iframe link with style parameter, like:
http://your_site.com/target.php?color=red
(the last phrase is a{color:red} encoded by urlencode function.
2) set the receiver page target.php like this:
<head>
..........
$col = FILTER_VAR(SANITIZE_STRING, $_GET['color']);
<style>.xyz{color: <?php echo (in_array( $col, ['red','yellow','green'])? $col : "black") ;?> } </style>
..........
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