# Forms HTML forms are in practice the most used way to communicate with a browser. SilverStripe provides classes to generate and handle the actions and data from a form. ## Overview A fully implemented form in SilverStripe includes a couple of classes that individually have separate concerns. * Controller - Takes care of assemble the form and recieving data from it. * Form - Holds sets of fields, actions and validators. * FormField - Fields that recieves data or displays them, e.g input fields. * FormActions - Often submit buttons that executes actions. * Validators - Validates the whole form, see [Form validation](form-validation.md) topic for more information. Depending on your needs you can customize and override any of the above classes, however the defaults are often sufficient. ## The Controller Forms start at the controller. Here is an simple example on how to set up a form in a controller. **Page.php** :::php class Page_Controller extends ContentController { public static $allowed_actions = array('HelloForm'); // Template method public function HelloForm() { $fields = new FieldList(); $actions = new FieldList( FormAction::create("doSayHello")->setTitle("Say hello") ); $form = new Form($this, 'HelloForm', $fields, $actions); // Load the form with previously sent data $form->loadDataFrom($this->request->postVars()); return $form; } public function doSayHello($data, Form $form) { // Do something with $data return $this->render(); } } The name of the form ("HelloForm") is passed into the `Form` constructor as a second argument. It needs to match the method name. Since forms need a URL, the `HelloForm()` method needs to be handled like any other controller action. In order to whitelist its access through URLs, we add it to the `$allowed_actions` array. Form actions ("doSayHello") on the other hand should NOT be included here, these are handled separately through `Form->httpSubmission()`. You can control access on form actions either by conditionally removing a `FormAction` from the form construction, or by defining `$allowed_actions` in your own `Form` class (more information in the ["controllers" topic](/topics/controllers)). **Page.ss** :::ss
$HelloForm
Be sure to add the Form name 'HelloForm' to the Controller::$allowed_actions() to be sure that form submissions get through to the correct action.
You'll notice that we've used a new notation for creating form fields, using `create()` instead of the `new` operator. These are functionally equivalent, but allows PHP to chain operations like `setTitle()` without assigning the field instance to a temporary variable. For in-depth information on the create syntax, see the [Injector](/reference/injector) documentation or the API documentation for `[api:Object]`::create().
## The Form Form is the base class of all forms in a SilverStripe application. Forms in your application can be created either by instantiating the Form class itself, or by subclassing it. ### Instantiating a form Creating a form is a matter of defining a method to represent that form. This method should return a form object. The constructor takes the following arguments: * `$controller`: This must be and instance of the controller that contains the form, often `$this`. * `$name`: This must be the name of the method on that controller that is called to return the form. The first two fields allow the form object to be re-created after submission. **It's vital that they are properly set - if you ever have problems with form action handler not working, check that these values are correct.** * `$fields`: A `[api:FieldList]` containing `[api:FormField]` instances make up fields in the form. * `$actions`: A `[api:FieldList]` containing the `[api:FormAction]` objects - the buttons at the bottom. * `$validator`: An optional `[api:Validator]` for validation of the form. Example: :::php // Controller action public function MyCustomForm() { $fields = new FieldList( EmailField::create("Email"), PasswordField::create("Password") ); $actions = new FieldList(FormAction::create("login")->setTitle("Log in")); return new Form($this, "MyCustomForm", $fields, $actions); } ## Subclassing a form It's the responsibility of your subclass' constructor to call :::php parent::__construct() with the right parameters. You may choose to take $fields and $actions as arguments if you wish, but $controller and $name must be passed - their values depend on where the form is instantiated. :::php class MyForm extends Form { public function __construct($controller, $name) { $fields = new FieldList( EmailField::create("Email"), PasswordField::create("Password") ); $actions = new FieldList(FormAction::create("login")->setTitle("Log in")); parent::__construct($controller, $name, $fields, $actions); } } The real difference, however, is that you can then define your controller methods within the form class itself. This means that the form takes responsibilities from the controller and manage how to parse and use the form data. **Page.php** :::php class Page_Controller extends ContentController { public static $allowed_actions = array( 'HelloForm', ); // Template method public function HelloForm() { return new MyForm($this, 'MyCustomForm'); } } **MyForm.php** :::php class MyForm extends Form { public function __construct($controller, $name) { $fields = new FieldList( EmailField::create("Email"), PasswordField::create("Password") ); $actions = new FieldList(FormAction::create("login")->setTitle("Log in")); parent::__construct($controller, $name, $fields, $actions); } public function login(array $data, Form $form) { // Authenticate the user and redirect the user somewhere Controller::curr()->redirectBack(); } } ## The FormField classes There are many classes extending `[api:FormField]`. There is a full overview at [form field types](/reference/form-field-types). ### Using Form Fields To get these fields automatically rendered into a form element, all you need to do is create a new instance of the class, and add it to the fieldlist of the form. :::php $form = new Form( $this, // controller "SignupForm", // form name new FieldList( // fields TextField::create("FirstName")->setTitle('First name'), TextField::create("Surname")->setTitle('Last name')->setMaxLength(50), EmailField::create("Email")->setTitle("Email address")->setAttribute('type', 'email') ), new FieldList( // actions FormAction::create("signup")->setTitle("Sign up") ), new RequiredFields( // validation "Email", "FirstName" ) ); ## Readonly You can turn a form or individual fields into a readonly version. This is handy in the case of confirmation pages or when certain fields can be edited due to permissions. Readonly on a Form :::php $myForm->makeReadonly(); Readonly on a FieldList :::php $myFieldList->makeReadonly(); Readonly on a FormField :::php $myReadonlyField = $myField->transform(new ReadonlyTransformation()); // shortcut $myReadonlyField = $myField->performReadonlyTransformation(); ## Custom form templates You can use a custom form template to render with, instead of *Form.ss* It's recommended you only do this if you've got a lot of presentation text, graphics that surround the form fields. This is better than defining those as *LiteralField* objects, as it doesn't clutter the data layer with presentation junk. First of all, you need to create your form on it's own class, that way you can define a custom template using a `forTemplate()` method on your Form class. :::php class MyForm extends Form { public function __construct($controller, $name) { $fields = new FieldList( EmailField::create("Email"), PasswordField::create("Password") ); $actions = new FieldList(FormAction::create("login")->setTitle("Log in")); parent::__construct($controller, $name, $fields, $actions); } public function login(array $data, Form $form) { // Do something with $data Controller::curr()->redirectBack(); } public function forTemplate() { return $this->renderWith(array($this->class, 'Form')); } } `MyForm->forTemplate()` tells the `[api:Form]` class to render with a template of return value of `$this->class`, which in this case is *MyForm*. If the template doesn't exist, then it falls back to using Form.ss. *MyForm.ss* should then be placed into your *templates/Includes* directory for your project. Here is an example of basic customisation: :::ss
<% if Message %>

$Message

<% else %> <% end_if %>
$Fields.dataFieldByName(Password)
$Fields.dataFieldByName(SecurityID)
<% if Actions %>
<% loop Actions %>$Field<% end_loop %>
<% end_if %>
`$Fields.dataFieldByName(FirstName)` will return the form control contents of `Field()` for the particular field object, in this case `EmailField->Field()` or `PasswordField->Field()` which returns an `` element with specific markup for the type of field. Pass in the name of the field as the first parameter, as done above, to render it into the template. To find more methods, have a look at the `[api:Form]` class and `[api:FieldList]` class as there is a lot of different methods of customising the form templates. An example is that you could use `<% loop Fields %>` instead of specifying each field manually, as we've done above. ### Custom form field templates The easiest way to customize form fields is adding CSS classes and additional attributes. :::php $field = TextField::create('MyText') ->addExtraClass('largeText'); ->setAttribute('data-validation-regex', '[\d]*'); Will be rendered as: :::html Each form field is rendered into a form via the `[FormField->FieldHolder()](api:FormField)` method, which includes a container `
` as well as a `