Custom Format for text fields

[Laura DebelloParticipant]

In a text field, under format, you have the option of “Custom” and a blank field appears underneath it. This field is greyed out for all other format options. What can be added in this field to indicate the “custom” format?

[ehuezoKeymaster]

Hi Laura, I’m checking into this for you.

[Laura DebelloParticipant]

Any news on this item?

[ehuezoKeymaster]

Hi Laura, when you choose the custom format, the blank field will allow you to type in the area. In this area, whatever you type becomes what the text that the text input field has to match.

ie, if in the blank field under the ‘custom’ format, you type the word “Hello”. When you preview your form, if the word “Hello” is not in the text input box, the field will have a red outline, and when the mouse hovers over the field, it will display a message which states that the field is invalid.

[Laura DebelloParticipant]

Does it mean that it has to match exactly, or can it just contain the values somewhere in what was entered, or does it match a pattern?

For example, if I wanted to ensure that in the login name field the user can enter only characters a-z and the symbols @ _ – and spaces, how would I go about this?

[ehuezoKeymaster]

Hi Laura, If you chose ‘none’ for the format in the example you specified above, then you would be able to enter any of these characters. In the current product, unfortunately, there is no way to say a-z, symbols and NO NUMBERS. I will raise this to see if it can be included in the product.

[Laura DebelloParticipant]

Thanks for the reply. It is as you stated above. It only allows the user to enter the exact value as stipulated in the design. However I am sure how you would use this feature.

[Anonymous]

Can you give us some practical applications of this feature? It seems that this is a static comparison. I could see something like this being useful if it had a regex capability, but not as is. Please enlighten us!

[ijoblingParticipant]

It is how you see it ‘static’ comparison. but what do you mean ‘regex’ capability ? if you want to control what users enter in a field look at the masked text input for instance? that is more commonly used

[Anonymous]

I mean to where you could put a regular expression in that field and create any kind of variable format. And yeah i think for most things the masked input would suffice but if the format property supported regular expression that would be awesome. I myself would find tons of uses for that.

[ijoblingParticipant]

have a look at ‘functions’

http://www.perfectforms.com/Documentation/manual/html/functions.htm

there are a number of things you can do here that may be of use to you. check that a text field contains a specific character for instance I’ve heard being used before

[tmrhymerParticipant]

Just got to reading through all the functions and found the search function. That looks like it works similarly to regular expression. It doesn’t look like it has full regex support though. I’m looking for something that I could take a pattern like ones listed here – http://regexlib.com/DisplayPatterns.aspx – check if some text matches the pattern.

[ijoblingParticipant]

maybe have a look at the ‘call javascript’ function. I think that javascript would enable you to do such things

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