The FormHelper does most of the heavy lifting in form creation. The FormHelper focuses on creating forms quickly, in a way that will streamline validation, re-population and layout. The FormHelper is also flexible - it will do almost everything for you using conventions, or you can use specific methods to get only what you need.

This special method outputs an opening form tag. All parameters are optional. If create is called with no parameters supplied, it assumes you are building a form that submits to the current controller, via the current URL. The default method for form submission is POST. The form element is also returned with a DOM ID. The ID is generated using the name of the model, and the name of the controller action, CamelCased. This will place your form data into the array: This can be handy for short forms that may not represent anything in your database.

The create method allows us to customize much more using the parameters, however.

First, you can specify a model name. All fields are assumed to belong to this model unless otherwise specified , and all models referenced are assumed to be associated with it.

If you do not specify a model, then it assumes you are using the default model for the current controller:. This will POST the form data to the add action of RecipesController. However, you can also use the same logic to create an edit form. For example, if we browse to http: Since this is an edit form, a hidden input field is generated to override the default HTTP method. When creating forms for models in plugins, you should always use plugin syntax when creating a form. This will ensure the form is correctly generated:.

This special array can contain a number of different key-value pairs that affect the way the form tag is generated. Changed in version 2. The default URL for all forms, is now the current URL including passed, named, and querystring parameters. This is to be used if there are any file elements inside the form. The absence of the proper enctype attribute will cause the file uploads not to function:.

This allows CakePHP to emulate proper REST support in web browsers. Deprecated since version 2. The supplied URL can be relative to your CakePHP application:.

All inputs created from that point forward would inherit the options declared in inputDefaults. You can override the defaultOptions by declaring the option in the input call:.

The FormHelper includes an end method that completes the form. Often, end only outputs a closing form tag, but using end also allows the FormHelper to insert needed hidden form elements that SecurityComponent requires:. If a string is supplied as the first parameter to end , the FormHelper outputs a submit button named accordingly along with the closing form tag:.

You can specify detail settings by passing an array to end:. See the Form Helper API for further details. If you are using SecurityComponent in your application you should always end your forms with end. There are a few ways to create form inputs with the FormHelper. This method will automatically inspect the model field it has been supplied in order to create an appropriate input for that field. Internally input delegates to other methods in FormHelper.

Creates the following elements given a particular Model. Or be directly associated to the model supplied to create. New in version 2.

The binary type now maps to a file input. You can explicitly set required key in options array to override it for a field. You can use the input method of the FormHelper to create appropriate inputs for all of these form fields:. Assuming that User hasAndBelongsToMany Group. In the controller action you would put the following:.

If you want to create a select field while using a belongsTo - or hasOne - Relation, you can add the following to your Users-controller assuming your User belongsTo Group:. If your model name consists of two or more words, e.

Try to avoid using FormHelper:: The Form helper is pretty smart. This allows you to omit the model name when generating inputs for the model that the form was created for.

You can create inputs for associated models, or arbitrary models by passing in Modelname. If you need to specify multiple fields using the same field name, thus creating an array that can be saved in one shot with saveAll , use the following convention:. FormHelper uses several field-suffixes internally for datetime input creation. If you are using fields named year , month , day , hour , minute , or meridian and having issues getting the correct input, you can set the name attribute to override the default behavior:.

In addition to its own options input accepts options for the generated input types, as well as HTML attributes. The following will cover the options specific to FormHelper:: Alternatively, you can set this key to false to disable the output of the div. Set this to an array to provide additional options for the label element.

If you do this, you can use a text key in the array to customize the label text:.

It has a number of suboptions which control the wrapping element, wrapping element class name, and whether HTML in the error message will be escaped. To disable only the error message, but retain the field classes, set the errorMessage key to false:. To prevent HTML being automatically escaped in the error message output, set the escape suboption to false:.

To override the model error messages use an array with the keys matching the validation rule names:. As seen above you can set the error message for each validation rule you have in your models. In addition you can provide i18n messages for your forms.

Support for the errorMessage option was added in 2. The supported array keys are: If you need to later change the defaults you can use FormHelper:: When this key is omitted and the input-type is text , textarea , email , tel , url or search and the field-definition is not one of decimal , time or datetime , the length option of the database field is used.

Regression with date year dropdown and empty value · Issue # · cakephp/cakephp · GitHub

When using FormHelper to generate inputs for GET forms, the input names will automatically be shortened to provide more human friendly names. If you want to override the generated name attributes you can use the name option:. In addition to the generic input method, FormHelper has specific methods for generating a number of different types of inputs.

These can be used to generate just the input widget itself, and combined with other methods like label and error to generate fully custom form layouts. Many of the various input element methods support a common set of options. All of these options are also supported by input.

php - cakePHP value for empty option - Stack Overflow

To reduce repetition the common options shared by all input methods are as follows:. The value is used if the data passed to the form does not contain a value for the field or if no data is passed at all. Beware of using false to assign a default value. In addition to the above options, you can mixin any HTML attribute you wish to use.

Any non-special option name will be treated as an HTML attribute, and applied to the generated HTML input element. For types select, date, time, datetime. When passed to a select list, this creates a blank option with an empty value in your drop down list. If you want to have a empty value with text displayed instead of just a blank option, pass in a string to empty:. If you want to create multiple blocks of inputs on a form that are all grouped together, you should use this parameter on all inputs except the first.

In this example, only the tertiary colors would be passed, and the primary colors would be overridden:. Disabling the 'hiddenField' on the second input group would prevent this behavior. Valid values include 12 , 24 , and null. The inputs will be put in the order defined by the dateFormat option.

Defines the order in which the year values will be set. Defaults to null which rounds half up according to interval. All elements are created under a form for the User model as in the examples above.

For this reason, the HTML code generated will contain attributes that reference to the User model. Create a label element. The rest of the methods available in the FormHelper are for creating specific form elements.

Hidden fields no longer remove the class attribute. This means that if there are validation errors on hidden fields, the error-field class name will be applied.

In addition to the Common options , textarea supports a few specific options:. Creates a checkbox form element. This method also generates an associated hidden form input to force the submission of data for the specified field. If you would like to generate a select with optgroups, just pass data in hierarchical format.

This works on multiple checkboxes and radio buttons too, but instead of optgroups wraps elements in fieldsets:. To disable all checkboxes set disabled to true:. Each time the form is displayed, the value inside will be empty. Upon submission, file fields provide an expanded data array to the script receiving the form data.

For the example above, the values in the submitted data array would be organized as follows, if the CakePHP was installed on a Windows server. This array is generated by PHP itself, so for more detail on the way PHP handles data passed via file fields read the PHP manual section on file uploads. Below is an example validation method you could define in your model to validate whether a file has been successfully uploaded:. You can also pass a relative or absolute URL to an image for the caption parameter instead of caption text.

So do not use this method in some opened form. Creates an HTML link, but access the URL using method POST. Requires JavaScript to be enabled in browser.

If you want to use this method inside of an existing form, you must use the inline or block options so that the new form can be rendered outside of the existing form. If all you are looking for is a button to submit your form, then you should use FormHelper:: The method option was added.

The inline and block options were added. They allow buffering the generated form tag, instead of returning with the link. This helps avoiding nested form tags. Creates a set of select inputs for date and time. It will also pre-select the fields with the current datetime. To create an empty option with prompt text of your choosing e. Returns false if given form field described by the current entity has no errors. Otherwise it returns the validation message.

You can declare a set of default options for input using FormHelper:: Changing the default options allows you to consolidate repeated options into a single method call:.

All inputs created from that point forward will inherit the options declared in inputDefaults. You can override the default options by declaring the option in the input call:. SecurityComponent offers several features that make your forms safer and more secure. As mentioned previously when using SecurityComponent, you should always close your forms using FormHelper:: Unlocks a field making it exempt from the SecurityComponent field hashing.

This also allows the fields to be manipulated by JavaScript. The effected methods are:.

javascript - Cakephp not changing selected value from Dropdown to default value - Stack Overflow

Last updated on Jun 09, Created using Sphinx 1. Page Contents FormHelper Creating Forms Options for create Closing the Form Creating form elements Field naming conventions Options GET Form Inputs Generating specific types of inputs Common options Options for select, checkbox and radio inputs Datetime options Form Element-Specific Methods Validating Uploads Creating buttons and submit elements Creating date and time inputs Displaying and checking errors Setting Defaults for all fields Working with SecurityComponent 2.

Note Since this is an edit form, a hidden input field is generated to override the default HTTP method. Often, end only outputs a closing form tag, but using end also allows the FormHelper to insert needed hidden form elements that SecurityComponent requires: Note If you are using SecurityComponent in your application you should always end your forms with end.

Label element Input element s Error element with message if applicable. The type of input created depends on the column datatype: Column Type Resulting Form Field string char, varchar, etc. Note Try to avoid using FormHelper:: To reduce repetition the common options shared by all input methods are as follows: Note The selected key for date and datetime inputs may also be a UNIX timestamp. If a string, will be used as the HTML tag to use.

Note When using FormHelper:: The effected methods are: Community Team Issues Github YouTube Channel Get Involved Bakery Featured Resources Newsletter Certification My CakePHP CakeFest Facebook Twitter.