The Css tab allows you to add your own custom Css to style the form. To apply a certain style only to some form elements, you can use a Css selector. The JavaScript tab lets you use the library jQuery. This library makes use of Css selectors with some additions. That means that you can use Css selectors to access elements even when using JavaScript.

See the help pages for the JavaScript tab for further details on jQuery.

See the help pages for the Css tab for further details on Css.

This page gives an overview of selectors in general; and which special selectors you can use for forms created with formcycle.

Contents

Attribute selectors during form creation

Attribut selector: data-name

You often need to access a certain form element by its name. To do so you can use the following data-name selector:

$("[data-name='tfMail']") // via jQuery (JavaScript tab)

[data-name="tfMail"] { /* via CSS (CSS tab)*/
  color: #DDD;
}

The value of the attribute data-name corresponds to the name of the form element you wish to select. That is, the name you entered in the base settings section of the properties panel of the formcycle Designer.

These data-name selectors are a special type of attribute selectors. Attribute selectors offer a way to select HTML element by any attribute or attribute value. HTML elements may have any number of attributes:

<input id="xi-tf-1" class="XItem XTextField" data-name="tfMail" value="[email protected]" data-count="9">

You can now select an element by specifying which attribute it should have or what the value one of its attributes should be. An attribute selector consists of two parts and always looks like this:

[key="value"]

key

Name of the attribute. Only elements which have got such an attribute are selected.

value

Value of the attribute. Only elements which have the specified attribute set to this value are selected.

That is, to select all elements that have got an attribute named value (irrespective of the value of this attribute), use [value]. To select only  the subset of those elements that have the value attribute set to demo, use [value="demo"].

Attribute selector: data-xn

Each form element is put inside a container element. This container consists of the actual form element and additional elements, such as the label for the form element. In case you want to select the container element, use an attribute selector for the attribute data-xn (=xima-name) instead of data-name.

$("[data-xn='tfMail']"); // via jQuery (JavaScript tab)

[data-xn="tfMail"] { /* via CSS (CSS tab)*/
  font-weight: 600;
}

Additional attribut selectors

// Select all input fields of type "text"
$("input[type='text']")

// Select all images with an "alt" attribute
$("img[alt]")

It is also possible to select those element with an attribute value that ends on a certain expression. To do so, use the operator  $= instead of the equal sign =.

// All links, where attribute "href" ends on ".pdf"
$("a[href$='.pdf']")

Class selectors

HTML defines a special attribute named  class. Often this is also referred to as a Css class. This attribute lets you specify one or multiple classes, separated by a space. Within Css, that lets you apply certain styles to all elements with a given class. With JavaScript, you can apply a certain feature to all elements of a given class. For example, all form elements generated by formcycle have always got the class XItem as well as an additional class that depends on the type of the element, such as XTextField or XUpload.

Classes are used pretty often. There exists a special selector for classes that makes it easier to select elements by their classes. To select all elements with a particular class, use a selector that consists of a period, followed by the name of the class. To illustrate, a simple HTML page could look like this:

<input class="XItem XTextField">
<select class="XItem XSelect">
  <option value="">Please selectoption>
  <option value="1">Option 1option>
  <option value="2">Option 2option>
select>

Now you can access these elements with selectors:

/* All elements with the class XItem */
.XItem {
  font-size: 20px; /* Set font size to 20 pixels*/
}

/* Select only input fields (class XTextField) */
.XTextField {
  color: blue; /* Set font color to blue */
}

Working with selected elements

Once you have select an element, you can use one of the many functions offered by jQuery and FORMCYCLE to edit their values or modify them in other interesting ways.

// Hide all input fields
$("input[type='text']").visible(false)

// Mark the element with the name "tfZip" as a required field
$("[data-name='tfZip']").setRequired(true)

Generic JavaScript functionality

The FORMCYCLE Designer lets you add additional classes and custom attributes to a form field. You could write a certain JavaScript feature and apply it to all elements with a particular class or attribute. Then anybody can choose which elements that functionality should be applied by adding the class or attribute in the FORMCYCLE Designer. For example:

for (const element of $("[data-user]")) {
  const prop = element.dataset.user;
  const value = XFC_METADATA.currentUser[prop];
  if (value && !element.value) {
    element.value = value;
  }
}

$("[data-user]").each(function(_, element) {
  var prop = $(element).data("user");
  var value = XFC_METADATA.currentUser[prop];
  if (value && !element.value) {
    element.value = value;
  }
});

An input field gets the attribute data-user. It is set to a value such as email or forename. The JavaScript from above then checks whether the currently signed in user has got the specified property (email address, first name etc.). If they do, the input field is prefilled with that value. This way you only need to write a JavaScript feature once. If you upload the JavaScript file as client resource, it is available to all forms.

Form element selectors

The following selectors are often used when working with FORMCYCLE forms.

List of classes

Each type of form elements has got a special Css class that is used in the form. You can use this class to select all elements of a certain type.

Here are a few graphic representations of the form elements and how they are addressed with CSS.

Names ending in a “1” are preset for the first use in a form and can be renamed in the form designer in the basic properties.

Input elements

Container elements

Layout elements

Other elements