Is it possible in a visualforce page to, in a simple way, synchronize a selectList with a select inside a canvasApp?

Question

Ok, here is the setup:

• I've a Canvas App with a select in it;
• I've a Visualforce page with a selectList element filled with the same options as the select in the Canvas App, and a canvasApp element that points to the previously mentioned Canvas App.

Now I need to be able to synchronize the contents of the selectList with the select.
From everything I've read and experimented I'm concluding that the only way to do this is by using a somewhat messy javascript. So I was just wondering if anyone out there has a better idea on how to do this.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm going to point you here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3800309/using-postmessage-to-refresh-iframes-parent-document

I've just implemented it myself with a Canvas app and it works fine.

window.addEventListener('message', receiveMessage, false);

function receiveMessage(evt)
{
  if (evt.origin === 'https://my.cavasapp.com')
  {
     //Code to process message and sync select box here.
     //alert("got message: "+evt.data);
  }
}

Note the browser limitations here (IE won't allow a JSON object it seems): http://caniuse.com/x-doc-messaging