Auto height for Iframe containing embedded / published Google Doc

Question

I have an iframe with a published Google Doc. The contents of that doc are subject to change, so I want to auto adjust the height of the iframe based on its content. I found some solutions for this, but they all require access to the head of the child document. Does anyone have an idea on how to do this?

You can view an excerpt of the code I use below:

#faq{
height: 800px;
overflow: hidden;
position: relative;
width: 660px;
border-top: 1px solid #90C547;
border-bottom: 1px solid #90C547;
}

<div id="faq"><iframe id="faqif" src="https://docs.google.com/document/..../pub?embedded=true" frameborder="0" style="overflow:hidden;overflow-x:hidden;overflow-y:hidden;height:900px;width:832px;position:absolute;top:-92px;left:-150px;right:0px;bottom:0px;z-index:0;" height="900px" width="832px"></iframe></div>

Solution 1

Simple answer...you cant

(sorry)

The reason is due to the cross domain policy (more, info) you cant access the iframe child document and therefore ascertain its height in order to resize the iframe accordingly, simply put

In computing, the same-origin policy is an important concept in the web application security model. The policy permits scripts running on pages originating from the same site – a combination of scheme, hostname, and port number – to access each other's DOM with no specific restrictions, but prevents access to DOM on different sites.

source

[...]

If you don't have control over the framed site, you cannot circumvent the cross-domain policy.

source

And if you cant do this, you cant do what you want because there is no way of ascertaining the child document's height.

It seems the reason you want to do this is design related. As such, you may want to look at different ways to implement the content (iframe) within your site, the obvious one being that the natural restriction on height is browser viewport height, perhaps therefore make the iframe 100% of the viewport (html, body) height? Although this will interfere with your design if there are other components on the page...but there are alternatives...the iframe could:

1. Be aligned to one side of the page with 100% height set

2. Be placed within a popup or modal window with 100% height/width

3. Be controlled (JS) to stretch with the parent window, perhaps with a fixed bottom

Also remember that because this is a global restriction on this kind of content, users are not completely unused to seeing it so though it isnt an ideal design choice, it isnt necessarily one which will confuse/suprise visitors to your site.

Solution 2

There's no current way to do this.

You can, however, make the height a lot larger and hide the borders, this way the iframe scrollbar won't appear and the document will appear to be a part of your website.

Solution 3

The bad news is that the cross domain policy will not let you do that in any way around. I spent a couple hours trying to work around, which included:

• Creating a parent DIV and fit the iframe on it
• Trying to dynamically resize the parent DIV
• Trying to find a library to calculate the height in Server side
• and a lot of googling.

The best approach is to use an available library.

Download the ZIP from the following URL and follow the simple installation instructions written there.

http://davidjbradshaw.github.io/iframe-resizer/

It looks promising but I am not able to test it myself. Have a look at it and post comments if you need help.

Comments

[Paritosh]

Share your code for this... Also, visit stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic

[David]

Here is an example of a page getting its content from a Google Doc: images.open-org.com/OO-developers/PhotoAccounting/faq.php

[JF it]

@David link seems to be broken

[David]

@JFit I did not expect such a fast response, so I updated the page, so it was down for a few minutes. The link works now.

[JF it]

@David Think this isnt' possible.. cross origin policy doesn't allow us to access the frame contents as the domains don't match.. so theres no way to get the inner elements height/contents/attributes.. think im about ready to give up :/

[JF it]

@David Check out this link.. total Hack but looks very promicing.. stackoverflow.com/questions/153152/…

[David]

@JFit In that link it says: "There is a way around the same origin policy, but it requires changes on both the iframed content and the framing page, so if you haven't the ability to request changes on both sides, this method won't be very useful to you, i'm afraid." I could utilize PHP to download the Google Doc, though so it would be on the local domain. Shouldn't that work?

[JF it]

Yes getfilecontents in PHP should probally.. maybe work.. yes.. That method ignores the same origin policy afaik.

[David]

@JFit We have implemented this method successfully now. Thank you!

[alex_1948511]

You can make a trick by proxing google docs by your server and insert link to same domain as your site: <iframe src="my-domain.com/my-google-docs-proxy/…" >....

[Richard Banks]

surely you need the scroll bar. What if the document is larger than the iframes heght. Also surely the if the iframe had a huge height value if would make your page scroll even if the document was a few lines in height

[Xarcell]

@RichardBanks no, what he's saying is ensure you set the height of the iframe higher than the Google Doc height. It can be done. However, the downside is that if the document is edited and becomes longer, then the scroll bar will come back.

[David]

Thank you for your answer. I have attempted to set it up here: possiblypublicfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/deleteme/doc-embed.html I am really on the limits of my knowledge here, so I could very well be making mistakes. I, however, got an error: "Error: Permission denied to access property 'document'" The document is currently showing a scrollbar in the iframe, which is not what I had hoped for, but rather that the web page would have the same height as the iframe, removing the need for a scroll bar on the iframe.

[Akshay Mohite]

check this jsfiddle.net/nT9bj i add css class "bgcolor_patch" to hide scroll bar on the iframe.

[David]

The height on that jsfiddle is not the same as the height of the Google Doc.

[Akshay Mohite]

we cant remove scroll bar from iframe but we can hide it. You need to replace jsfiddle.net/nT9bj code to your doc-embed.html (possiblypublicfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/deleteme/doc-embed.htm‌​l ) which was earlier given by you. Then it will take same height as browser height.

[David Bradshaw]

This will only work with iframe content from the same domain as the host page. As Google docs is on a different domain you get the permission error. Only way around this would be to have your server proxy the content from Google Docs.

[Akshay Mohite]

I updated code in answers section regarding An iframe with a published Google Doc with to auto adjust the height of the iframe based on its content. Because of cross domain policy you will get permission error. but it will not shown on page....so no need to worry :) (Y)

[davke]

As per the documentation on github for iframe-resizer, it also requires an access to the site with iframe's content (to put a JS file there). So, it seems that in it's current (at the time of writing this comment) state it cannot be used for the required task either.

[Kyle Baker]

unless you have y-overflow hidden... then the document just becomes cut-off.