Provide a method to get the value of the <label> associated with an <input>

[petdance]

I just discovered accidentally that HTML::Form::TextInput scrapes the value of its associated <label> tag and stores it in a hash entry for "value_name".

use HTML::Form;
use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Indent = $Data::Dumper::Terse = $Data::Dumper::Sortkeys = 1;

my ($form) = HTML::Form->parse( <<'HTML', 'https://example.com' );
<form>
    <label for="id-cpw">Current Password</label>
    <input id="id-cpw" name="curr_password" value="" type="password">

    <!-- input is before label here. -->
    <input id="id-npw" name="new_password" value="" type="password" disabled="disabled">
    <label for="id-npw">New Password</label>
</form>
HTML

for my $name ( qw( curr_password new_password ) ) {
    my $input = $form->find_input( "$name" );
    print Dumper( $input);
}

gives this output:

bless( {
  'id' => 'id-cpw',
  'name' => 'curr_password',
  'type' => 'password',
  'value' => '',
  'value_name' => 'Current Password'
}, 'HTML::Form::TextInput' )
bless( {
  'disabled' => 'disabled',
  'id' => 'id-npw',
  'name' => 'new_password',
  'type' => 'password',
  'value' => '',
  'value_name' => ''
}, 'HTML::Form::TextInput' )

Unfortunately there's no documented method on the object to access that. Also, note that the field is not populated unless the <label> comes before the <input>, even though that's not a requirement in HTML. (It's the order that causes this, not that the 2nd field in this example is disabled)

It would be great if there was a documented method that would let the user get at the <label> tag value for any input field: Text, password, checkbox, radio. It would make it super easy to validate that all fields on a form had proper <label>s, which are one of the lowest of low-hanging fruit for making web forms more accessible.

[oalders]

This sounds like something we'd accept a pull request for.