Joomla! Documentation™

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The text form field type provides a text box for data entry. If the field has a value saved, this value is displayed when the page is first loaded. If not, the default value (if any) is selected.

attribute	presence	type	description	example
type	mandatory	string	Type of field - must be text	"text"
name	mandatory	string	is the unique name of the field.	"myName"
label	mandatory	string	(translatable) is the descriptive title of the field.	"Text Field"
size	optional	number	is the width of the text box in characters. If omitted the width is determined by the browser. The value of size does not limit the number of characters that may be entered.	"20"
maxlength	optional	number	limits the number of characters that may be entered.	"25"
default	optional	string	(not translatable) is the default value.	"Default value"
description	optional	string	(translatable) is text that will be shown as a tooltip when the user moves the mouse over the drop-down box.	"This is a text field"
hint	optional	string	(translatable) is text that will be shown as a placeholder.	"Placeholder text"
class	optional	string	is a space separated CSS class name list for the HTML form field.	"foo bar barfoo"
readonly	optional	boolean	The field cannot be changed and will automatically inherit the default value.	"true" "1" "readonly"
disabled	optional	boolean	is a space separated CSS class name list for the HTML form field. It will also not submit	"true" "1" "disabled"
required	optional	boolean	The field must be filled before submitting the form.	"true" "1" "required"
filter	optional	enum	allow the system to save certain html tags or raw data.	"integer"
autocomplete	optional	boolean	allow the user agent to prefilling the value based on earlier user input.	"false" "0" "off"
autofocus	optional	boolean	The field get focused automatically on page load.	"true" "1" "on"
spellcheck	optional	boolean	allow the user agent to disable spellcheck.	"false" "0" "off"
inputmode	optional	string	kind of input mechanism for users entering content into the field.	"default numeric"

The XML <field> element may include one or more <option> elements which define the datalist items. The text between the <option> and </option> tags is what will be shown in the suggestion list and is a translatable string. The <option> tag takes the following argument:

• value (optional) is the value that will be shown in the suggestion list.

Example XML field definition:

<field name="mytextvalue" type="text" default="Some text" label="Enter some text" description="" size="10" />

Use the integer filter to ensure that letters types get stripped when the form is processed.

<field name="myintvalue" type="text" default="8" label="Enter some text" description="Enter some description" filter="integer" />

Use the raw filter to ensure that html code is preserved when the form is processed.

<field name="myhtmlvalue" type="text" default="" label="Enter some text" description="Enter some description" filter="raw" />