Creating a form in Drupal - what types of fields are there

02.08.18 IT / Drupal 5481

When creating a form in Drupal, you must specify its type for each field. What types of fields exist in Drupal , or rather, which #type can be specified in the form? There are a lot of values, let's list the common ones:

• checkbox - creates a single checkbox checkbox;
• checkboxes - creates a field containing checkboxes in the form of many checkboxes;
• date - field for entering date;
• fieldset - allows you to create a border around the form;
• file - a field for uploading a file;
• machine_name - field for specifying machine name;
• managed_file - allows you to create a field for uploading a file, with buttons to upload or delete a file right on the edit page;
• password - field for entering a password;
• password_confirm - field for confirming the password;
• radio - radio button field;
• radios - creates a field containing radio buttons in the form of many radio buttons;
• select - field for selecting a value from the list;
• tableselect - creates a table in which you can select a value in the left column using checkboxes or radio buttons;
• text_format is a field that allows you to enter long text with hyphenation. Optionally, you can choose the format for entering text;
• textarea - field for entering large text;
• textfield - simple field for entering short values;
• vertical_tabs - creates a field in the form of vertical tabs;
• weight - a field for conveniently specifying the weight of an element.

There are also special types, consider them:

• actions - A wrapper element for grouping one or more buttons on a form, helps ensure correct theme styling and allows other modules to properly modify form actions. Usually these are buttons "Save", "Delete", "Cancel";
• button - usually this type is used to create a button for previewing. When the button is clicked, the form will be submitted, where it will be validated and rebuilt, but no submit handler is called;
• container - the field generates HTML to wrap child elements into the container. Surrounds child elements with the div tag and adds attributes such as classes or id;
• image_button - image button;
• submit - button for submitting the form;
• form - creates a field containing form elements;
• hidden - creates a hidden field to transfer any additional data;
• token - a field that allows you to select a token;
• markup - a field that allows you to set your own HTML markup;
• item - Creates a display-only form element to provide a title and description;
• value is a field for setting the form value, which is internal and never displayed on the screen.

As you can see, there are a lot of field types in Drupal - using Form API , you can create almost any input element for any need. We looked at the general and special types of fields that can be created in Drupal.