Text area

The icon for form elements of type text area

Functionality

Form elements of type textarea add a multi-line text area to the current form, allowing the user to enter multiple lines of text. The properties panel label allows you to add a descriptive label to the checkbox.

The basic properties panel of the Xima® Formcycle Designerlets you change the height of a text area. Use this to control how many lines of text the user can see at once.

Basic properties

Basic settings for Basic properties

The basic properties name, width and hidden are available for all form elements.

This panel lets you configure basic properties such as the element's name and its width.

Elements can be repeated to allow the user to enter one or more data sets.

The number of times an element is repeated can be set via a trigger. In this example, the fieldset with the personal data of a person's child is repeated. The number of repetitions depends on the number of children the user has selected.

Name	Description
Element	You can change an element's type via the drop down menu. For example, you could change a single input field into a multi line input field (textarea). The element types that are available depend on the original element type. Container and fieldsets cannot be changed into other form elements.
Name	Technical name of the elements. Only letters and numbers are allowed. The name is used, for example, to refer to the form field during workflow processing. To change the name and update the references to this form element at the same time the Rename form elements function should be used.
Alias	An alternative technichal name that may contain any character.
Width	The width of the form element, relative to other elements in the same row. For example, when you place three elements next to each other in the same row and set their widths to 10, 10 und 30, they will take up 20% (=10/(10+10+30)), 20%, and 60% of the entire width of the row, respectively.
Hidden	When enabled, the form element is hidden and will not be visible to the user. If you wish to hide or show the element dynamically, depending on the value of another element, use the hidden if condition or a JavaScript function such as jQuery.fn.visible.
Disabled	When enabled, the value of the form element cannot be edited. Also, the value will not be transmitted to the server when the user submits the form. For text input fields you can optionally decide whether you want to transmit the value when the form is submitted.
Repeat	When enabled, the user can create an arbitrary amount of repetition (copies) of the element. This is useful, for example, when the user needs to enter one or more email addresses. Please note that repeated elements cannot be nested: A container or fieldset that is repeated cannot contain elements that are also repeated.
Min repetitions	Minimum number of repetition that must exist. When this limit is reached, the user cannot delete any more repetitions. This limit is also the initial number of repeated elements that are displayed when the form is opened for the first time.
Max repetitions	Maximumer of allowed repetitions. When this limit is reached, the user cannot add anymore more repetitions.
Repeat trigger	When an element is selected, the value of that element determines how many repetitions are created. For example: A select element or input field lets the user enter the number of children they have. A fieldset with the personal data of a child is marked as repeated, and its trigger is set to the select or input field. Now, when the user changes the number of children, the appropriate number of fieldsets are created automatically.
Hide buttons	Available only when a repeat trigger was set. When enabled, the plus and minus buttons for adding and removing elements are hidden. This is useful when the number of repetitions should depend only on the value of another field and the user should not be able to alter the number of repetitions directly.

Alias

When a form is submitted, the entered data is transmitted as key value pairs (element name value. The name must contain only letters and number. You can use the name of an element as form variables during workflow processing to refer to the transmitted values. The name is also used when sending the submitted data to other system via an interface. Sometimes, when you need to integrate external third-party system into FORMCYCLE, the external system may require a particular name for a form field, which may include special character. In this case, you can use the alias name, which allows all special characters to be entered.

When an alias was set, you can use that alias instead of the orignal name to refer to the form field.

Renaming form elements

If form elements are simply renamed, parts of the JavaScript or form workflow may no longer work correctly because they reference the form element by its name. By clicking on the pencil icon next to the form element name, the form element can be renamed, updating all references to the form element at the same time. You can select where to search for references to the form element:

in the JavaScript area of the form
in the CSS area of the form
in JavaScript form files
in CSS form files
in the workflow of the form
for elements on the property "Value"
for elements on the property "Buttons"
for elements on the property "Options"

If a reference is found in the selected areas, it will be updated with the new name.

You need to pay special attention to JavaScript code. Common ways of referencing a form element are taken care of. The name in usual selectors such as $('[name="tfEmail"]') is replaced with the new name. However, uncommon selectors such as document.getElementByName("tfEmail") are not replaced.

Moreover, please note that it is not possible, even in principle, to replace all references in a complex programming language such as JavaScript. For example, the name may be be taken from a variable, from a computation or from an external data source: ["EMail", "Vorname", "Nachname"].forEach(name => $(`[name="tf${name}"]`).clear()). Such cases require you to adjust the JavaScript manually. If you have forms with complex JavaScript code, you should always evaluate the effects of renaming a form element beforehand.

This form element possesses the following additional properties for the section Basic properties.

Name	Description
Height (in px)	The height of the text area in pixels.
Auto resize	Dynamically adjusts the height of the element to the entered content.
Show character count	Displays the current number of characters entered.

The constraints properties panel of the Xima® Formcycle Designer lets you select a data type and other constraints, such as whether the text area can be left empty.

Basic properties

Basic settings for Basic properties

The basic properties name, width and hidden are available for all form elements.

This panel lets you configure basic properties such as the element's name and its width.

Elements can be repeated to allow the user to enter one or more data sets.

Name	Description
Element	You can change an element's type via the drop down menu. For example, you could change a single input field into a multi line input field (textarea). The element types that are available depend on the original element type. Container and fieldsets cannot be changed into other form elements.
Name	Technical name of the elements. Only letters and numbers are allowed. The name is used, for example, to refer to the form field during workflow processing. To change the name and update the references to this form element at the same time the Rename form elements function should be used.
Alias	An alternative technichal name that may contain any character.
Width	The width of the form element, relative to other elements in the same row. For example, when you place three elements next to each other in the same row and set their widths to 10, 10 und 30, they will take up 20% (=10/(10+10+30)), 20%, and 60% of the entire width of the row, respectively.
Hidden	When enabled, the form element is hidden and will not be visible to the user. If you wish to hide or show the element dynamically, depending on the value of another element, use the hidden if condition or a JavaScript function such as jQuery.fn.visible.
Disabled	When enabled, the value of the form element cannot be edited. Also, the value will not be transmitted to the server when the user submits the form. For text input fields you can optionally decide whether you want to transmit the value when the form is submitted.
Repeat	When enabled, the user can create an arbitrary amount of repetition (copies) of the element. This is useful, for example, when the user needs to enter one or more email addresses. Please note that repeated elements cannot be nested: A container or fieldset that is repeated cannot contain elements that are also repeated.
Min repetitions	Minimum number of repetition that must exist. When this limit is reached, the user cannot delete any more repetitions. This limit is also the initial number of repeated elements that are displayed when the form is opened for the first time.
Max repetitions	Maximumer of allowed repetitions. When this limit is reached, the user cannot add anymore more repetitions.
Repeat trigger	When an element is selected, the value of that element determines how many repetitions are created. For example: A select element or input field lets the user enter the number of children they have. A fieldset with the personal data of a child is marked as repeated, and its trigger is set to the select or input field. Now, when the user changes the number of children, the appropriate number of fieldsets are created automatically.
Hide buttons	Available only when a repeat trigger was set. When enabled, the plus and minus buttons for adding and removing elements are hidden. This is useful when the number of repetitions should depend only on the value of another field and the user should not be able to alter the number of repetitions directly.

Alias

When an alias was set, you can use that alias instead of the orignal name to refer to the form field.

Renaming form elements

in the JavaScript area of the form
in the CSS area of the form
in JavaScript form files
in CSS form files
in the workflow of the form
for elements on the property "Value"
for elements on the property "Buttons"
for elements on the property "Options"

If a reference is found in the selected areas, it will be updated with the new name.

This form element possesses the following additional properties for the section Basic properties.

Name	Description
Datatype	How to check whether the entered text is valid. For example, you can use this to check for invalid email addresses. See also the built-in validators.
Length min	The minimum number of allowed characters.
Length max	The maximum number of allowed characters.
Value min	Only available for numeric datatypes: the smallest allowed number.
Value max	Only available for numeric datatypes: the largest allowed number.
Must equal	If set: The value of this input field must be equal to the value of the field that is selected here.

Label

Basic settings for Label

This property defines the label text of an element. A label is the text above, below or to the right or left of an element. Not every element has got this property.

The label text appears next to a form element. It should be kept short and tell the user what they should enter in this form field.

Name	Beschreibung
Label	Value of the label. This is the text that is displayed next to the element.
Alignment	Specifies the position (left, right, above, below) of the label.
Width (in px)	Distance between label and the element. Applies only when the alignment is set to left.
Placeholder	Placeholder text, applies only to input fields.
Title	Tooltip of the item (the HTML title attribute).
Unit	Text that after an element. Usually this is used for units, such EURO or km.

This form elements does not possess any additional settings for the section Label.

Value

Basic settings for Value

Value for input fields.

Value for selection elements.

This property defines the initial value of the element. Depending on the selected item, there are different options to choose from. For more details on the value of particular elements, see the list of available form elements.

It is not possible to define initial values for "repeated" elements or elements that are in repeated containers in this way.

This form elements does not possess any additional settings for the section Value.

CSS classes

Basic settings for CSS classes

Selecting CSS Classes.

7.0.11+ This property lets you select one or many CSS classes for an element. You can enter any class name you want, and you do not have do include a dot at the beginning (an initial dot is supported for backwards compatibility). In addition, classes defined in CSS files are suggested as autocomplete suggestions. You can add classes to the form element itself, and you can also add classes to the div container of the form element.

CSS classes on the input element are added directly to the HTML input element. This is the same behavior as in previous versions when you added CSS classes to an element.

CSS classes configured for the container, on the other hand, are added to the HTML container element which contains the input element. This is a new feature introduced in 7.0.13. It makes it possible, for example, to style the label of a form element, which is located in the same container as the input element.

Until 7.0.10+ : The available CSS classes are read from the CSS in the CSS tab and from the selected CSS theme. When you select or deselect a class, the changes are applied immediately and any layout or design changes are visible in the form. You can also filter the available classes by using the filter at the end of the list.

This form elements does not possess any additional settings for the section CSS classes.

Attributes

Basic settings for Attributes

Arbitrary custom HTML attributes are deprecated. HTML5 defines so-called data- attributes that can be used to store custom data in HTML elements. For example, it is ok to use the attributes data-price or data-serial-id, but you should not use attributes such as price or serialId.

The panel attributes lets you add custom attributes to the corresponding HTML elements of each form element. You can access them with JavaScript later, or add existing HTML attributes such as the attribute type for <input> elements.

This panel lets you add custom HTML attributes that may be needed for custom features implemented via JavaScript.

A custom HTML attribute has been added and can be seen when inspecting the generated HTML.

Adding an attribute

To add an HTML attribute, just enter the name and the value of the attribute into one of the columns. A new, empty column will be added automatically.

Deleting an attribute

Click on the icon to the left to delete an attribute.

Accessing data attributes via JavaScript

If you want to add custom data to an element, use the prefix data- for the name. Additionally, the attribute name should contain no uppercase letters and use dashes to separate words. For example, data-serial-version is a good data attribute, dataSerialVersion is not. When accessing these attributes via JavaScript, remove the dashes and capitalize the first letter of each word.

Assuming the attribute data-serial-version was set to 1aFXc for the element tfSerialVer, you can access this data as follows:

const serialVersion = $("[name='tfSerialVer']").data("serialVersion");
console.log("Serial version is:" , serialVersion);

This form elements does not possess any additional settings for the section Attributes.

Available only if

Basic settings for Available only if

The property Available only if controls whether elements are displayed or not depending on the current state or user.

Note that when an element is not available, it is never rendered and will not be present anywhere in the HTML. This means that users cannot see the form field or its current data even if they take a look at the source code of the form.

This lets you restrict the form field to a certain user group or to a certain state.

When only one state or a user group is selected, the form element is displayed only when the form is in the selected state or viewed by a user of the selected user group. For each state and user group there is also the opposite option to display a form element only when it is not in the selected state or not viewed by the selected user group. For example, when you want display a form element only when a user fills out the form for the first time, you can select the option no state.

If both a state and a user group are selected, the form element is displayed only when the form is both in the selected state as well as opened by a user belonging to one of the selected user groups.

The selection no state means that the form was opened for the first time and not submitted yet.

This form elements does not possess any additional settings for the section Available only if.

Read-only if

Basic settings for Read-only if

This property controls whether form fields are read-only and cannot be edited in any way. You can choose which user groups are allowed to edit a certain form field. Furthermore, form fields can also be set to read-only only when the form is currently in a certain state.

The property read-only if determines whether an element is read-only or not.

If only one state or one user group has been selected, the form field can only be filled out, clicked at, or selected when the form is not in the selected state, or the user currently signed in is not a member of this group. For each state and user group there is also the opposite option to make a form element read-only when it is not in the selected state or not viewed by the selected user group.

When both a state and a user group are selected, the form field item can only be filled out, clicked at, or selected when the form is both not in the selected state and the user currently signed in does not belong to the selected user group as well.

When a form field was set to read-only and the form is submitted, its value will not be transmitted.

The option no state refers to the initial state of the form before it is submitted, ie. when a user opens the form for the first time.

This form elements does not possess any additional settings for the section Read-only if.

Other

Basic settings for Other

Comments can be added for internal use. They will not be visible to the user when they open the form.

You can add a comment for internal use that will not appear anywhere in the form.

This form elements does not possess any additional settings for the section Other.

Content [ Hide ]

Functionality
Basic properties
Basic properties
Label
Value
CSS classes
Attributes
Available only if
Read-only if
Other