Form Builder styling and layout

The form builder system allows you to provide custom layouts for:

  1. Entire forms
  2. Individual form items

These layouts can be used to give your content editors choice about the appearance of their forms.

Form layouts

Custom form layouts are implemented as viewlets with the pattern formbuilder.layouts.form.(yourlayout). Layouts are registered simply by implementing a viewlet with this pattern (as either a handler or view).

The viewlet

The args struct passed to the viewlet will contain a renderedForm key that contains the form itself with all the rendered items and submit button. It will also be passed any custom arguments sent to the renderForm() method (e.g. custom configuration in the form builder form widget).

The default layout is implemented simply with a view:

<!-- /views/formbuilder/layouts/form/default.cfm -->

<cfparam name="args.renderedForm" type="string">
<cfoutput>
	<div class="formbuilder-form form form-horizontal">
		#args.renderedForm#
	</div>
</cfoutput>

i18n for layout name

For each custom layout that you provide, an entry should be added to the /i18n/formbuilder/layouts/form.properties file to provide a title for layout choice menus. For instance, if you created a layout called 'stacked', you would add the following:

# /i18n/formbuilder/layouts/form.properties

stacked.title=Stacked layout

Item layouts

Form item layouts are implemented in a similar way to form layouts. Viewlets matching the pattern formbuilder.layouts.formfield.(yourlayout) will be automatically registered as global layouts for all form field items.

In addition, specific layouts for item types can also be implemented by creating viewlets that match the pattern, formbuilder.layouts.formfield.(youritemtype).(yourlayout). If an item type specific layout shares the same name as a global form field layout, the item type specific layout will be used when rendering an item for that type.

The viewlet

The item layout viewlet will receive an args struct with:

  • renderedItem, the rendered form control
  • error, any error message associated with the item
  • all configuration options set on the item

The default item layout looks like:

<cfparam name="args.renderedItem" type="string"  />
<cfparam name="args.label"        type="string"  />
<cfparam name="args.id"           type="string"  />
<cfparam name="args.error"        type="string"  default=""  />
<cfparam name="args.mandatory"    type="boolean" default="false" />

<cfoutput>
	<div class="form-group">
		<label class="col-sm-3 control-label no-padding-right" for="#args.id#">
			#args.label#
			<cfif IsTrue( args.mandatory )>
				<em class="required" role="presentation">
					<sup>*</sup>
					<span>#translateResource( "cms:form.control.required.label" )#</span>
				</em>
			</cfif>
		</label>

		<div class="col-sm-9">
			<div class="clearfix">
				#args.renderedItem#
				<cfif Len( Trim( args.error ) )>
					<label for="#args.id#" class="error">#args.error#</label>
				</cfif>
			</div>
		</div>
	</div>
</cfoutput>

i18n for layout names

Human friendly names for layouts should be added to /i18n/formbuilder/layouts/formfield.properties. For example, if creating a "twocolumn" layout, you should add the following:

# /i18n/formbuilder/layouts/formfield.properties

twocolumn.title=Two column