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Toolbox

The Form Builder toolbox provides the following:
  • Global icons:
    • Form Settings [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2017.2]
    • Cut/copy/paste
    • Undo/redo [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2017.2]
    • "Reload toolbox" [UNTIL Orbeon Forms 2017.1]
  • Form structure:
    • New Section
    • New Grid
    • New Repeated Grid
  • Form controls:
    • Form control (also known as form fields) you can add to your form.
  • Metadata:
    • Allows you to modify the application name and form name.
  • Advanced:
    • Includes advanced features like XML Schema, PDF and source code view.
  • Services and Actions:
    • Editors for simple services and actions.
Depending on your monitor or browser size, you can use the scrollbar to the right of the toolbox to see more toolbox content.

The toolbox can be configured via:
  • ​Properties: for selecting and ordering the components that show in the toolbox.
  • ​Component metadata: for the component names.

The "Reload Toolbox" icon or button reloads all the components in the toolbox. After reloading:
[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2019.1]
  • The list of all available (published) versions of section templates is updated.
  • The currently-selected versions of section templates, if still available, are updated to reflect their latest published.

The "Reload Toolbox" button is located at the top of the "Advanced" tab.

The "Reload Toolbox" icon is located at the top of the toolbox:

Pressing this button inserts a new section into the form. The section is inserted after the currently selected section, that is the section containing the currently selected control.
After insertion, the new section has an empty title. You can change the section title by clicking on it.

Pressing this button inserts a new grid into the form. The grid is inserted after the currently selected grid within the currently selected section, that is the section and grid containing the currently selected control.

Pressing this button inserts a new repeated grid into the form. The grid is inserted after the currently selected grid within the currently selected section (the section and grid containing the currently selected control).
See also Repeated grids.
[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2019.1]
You can also switch a regular grid to be repeated. See Repeat settings.

The toolbox contains the user interface controls you can insert into your form, grouped by category:
Category
Description
Text Controls
for capturing text
Utility Controls
for descriptions and calculations
Typed Controls
for capturing other data like numbers, emails, phone numbers, etc.
Date and Time
for capturing a date, a time or both
Selection Controls
for selecting one or more values, like dropdown menus, radio buttons, etc.
Attachments
for attaching images or files
Buttons
for action buttons
To add a control to your form, simply click on the control. The following insertion logic is implemented:
  • If the currently selected grid cell is empty, the control is inserted there.
  • Otherwise, if the cell to the right of the currently selected grid cell is empty, the control is inserted there.
  • Otherwise, if the control is the last control of the grid, a new grid row is inserted and the control is inserted in the first cell of the new row.
  • Otherwise, the controls in the toolbox are disabled and you cannot insert a new control.

Name
Description
Input Field
single-line input field
Plain Text Area
multi-line plain text area
Formatted Text Area
formatted text area (AKA rich text editor)
Password Field
input field that hides the characters you type
The controls appear like this at design time:

Name
Description
Explanatory Text
Explanatory text which does not capture a value (blog post)
Calculated Value
Like most other controls, this control has a label and hint, but unlike most controls it is not used to enter a value. Instead, it just shows a value, either fixed or calculated with a formula.
Hidden Field
This control supports most features of regular controls, but doesn't show in the form at runtime. See Hidden field component.

Name
Description
Number
number field with formatting, validation and rounding
Email Address
text field which validates that the content is an email address
Currency
US dollar currency
US Phone Number
US phone number with automatic formatting
US State
US state selector
The controls appear like this at design time:

Name
Description
Date
date field with date picker
Time
time field
Date and Time
combined date and time field
Dropdown Date
date chooser which uses dropdown menus
Fields Date
date chooser which uses separate text fields
The controls appear like this at design time:

Name
Selection
Description
Dropdown Menu
single
dropdown menu
Radio Buttons
single
radio buttons
Radio Buttons with "Other"
single
radio buttons with "Other" option to a enter a custom option
Checkboxes
multiple
checkboxes
Scrollable Checkboxes
multiple
scrollable checkboxes
Yes/No Answer
single
a simple "Yes" or "No" choice
Dynamic Data Dropdown
single
dynamic dropdown bound to a REST service
Autocomplete
single
autocompletion
You edit the choices of most selection controls with the Choices editor.
The controls appear like this at design time:
NOTE: The "Scrollable List" control is deprecated since Orbeon Forms 2016.1 and removed from the toolbox.

Name
Description
Single File Attachment
- file which can be attached to the form at design time or at runtime - the file can also be replaced or downloaded once attached
Multiple File Attachments
- [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2020.1] - files which can be attached to the form at design time or at runtime - the files can also be replaced or downloaded once attached
Image Attachment
- image which can be attached to the form at design time or at runtime - the image can also be changed at runtime once attached
Image
- image attached to the form at design time - it is not possible to change the image at runtime
Image Annotation
- image which can be attached to the form at design time or at runtime - the image can then be annotated with graphic objects - see also the blog post - SINCE Orbeon Forms 2016.3
Handwritten Signature
signature drawn with a mouse or touch screen
The controls appear like this at design time:
Here is an example of attachment control with multiple selection enabled:
Could not load image
The attachment control with mulltiple selection enabled
/form-runner/component/images/xbl-attachment-multiple.png
This is the Handwritten Signature control (which of course you usually leave blank at design time):

Name
Description
Button
standard button
Link Button
button appearing as a link
Buttons do not allow entering data, and by default do nothing significant, but they can be used to trigger actions with the Actions Editor.
NOTE: Buttons do not appear at all in preview mode.
The controls appear like this at design time:

Choices (sometimes called options) refer to the items which are part of a selection control such as a dropdown menu or checkboxes.
For more, see the Itemset Editor.

From the perspective of people who will be filling out your form, the data dropdown works just like a regular dropdown. However, the data in the dropdown comes from a service. For instance, imagine you have a list to select a state and that you don't want to hard code the list of states in the form, either for convenience, or because the subset of selectable states is dynamic:
  1. 1.
    Insert a data dropdown field.
  2. 2.
    Click on cogwheel to bring up a Control Settings dialog, similar to the one shown to the right.
  3. 3.
    In the Resource URI, enter the address of an HTTP service that returns the data you want to use to populate the dropdown. In most cases, the URL will look like http://your-host/your-service. If the address you specify start with a /, it is relative to the Orbeon Forms web app, which allows you to access a service you might have implemented in Orbeon Forms with XPL. For this example, let's assuming your service returns a list of states that looks like:
<states>
<state abbreviation="AK" name="Alaska"/>
<state abbreviation="AL" name="Alabama"/>
<state abbreviation="AR" name="Arkansas"/>
...
</states>
  1. 1.
    In the Items field, enter an XPath expression that returns one node per state. In this case, it will be: /states/state.
  2. 2.
    For each state (item), specify an expression relative to the node returning the label (shown to users in the dropdown) and the value (stored in the data). In this case, those expressions will be, respectively: @name and @abbreviation.
If the data in the dropdown depends on a value entered by users in another form field, you can pass that value to the service as a request parameter. For instance, let's say that in addition to the State dropdown, you have a City dropdown where you want to list all the cities in the currently selected state. If the service is at /xforms-sandbox/service/zip-cities and takes a request parameter state-abbreviation, assuming you named your State field state, in the Resource URI enter:
/xforms-sandbox/service/zip-cities?state-abbreviation={$state}
Limitation: you can't yet use a variable as shown in the above example, to refer to another fields value. Instead, if the control is in the same section use {../state}. If in a different section with name other-section, use {../../other-section/state}. See #431.

The autocomplete control is a single item selection control that loads a list of suggestions from a service. It takes the same Resource URI, Items, Label, and Value configuration parameters as the [Data dropdown control][46]. You may want to pass the value of other controls to the service, but you'll always want to pass the currently typed value, as the suggestions should depend on what users typed so far. You access to the currently typed by value with $fr-search-value, as in the following example:
/xforms-controls/services/countries?country-name={`encode-for-uri($fr-search-value)}

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On this page
Introduction
Configuration of the toolbox
Cut, copy and paste
Undo and redo
Reloading the toolbox
Function
Orbeon Forms 2017.2 and newer
Orbeon Forms 2017.1 and earlier
Form structure
New Section button
New Grid button
New Repeated Grid button
Form controls
Text Controls
Utility Controls
Typed Controls
Date and time Controls
Selection Controls
Attachment Controls
Button Controls
Choices
Data dropdown
Autocomplete
See also