Content filter

Availability

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2026.1]

What it does

The fr:content-filter component (available as the "With Content Filter" appearance in Form Builder) checks text entered into fields or text areas against dictionaries of inappropriate words and profanity, providing real-time visual feedback and form validation.

Key capabilities:

Real-time visual feedback: As the user types in the browser, any detected inappropriate words are immediately highlighted with a wavy red underline directly beneath the text.
Form validation: The field is marked invalid if any prohibited content is present, preventing form submission until corrections are made.
Evasion resistance: The filter automatically handles common evasion techniques:
- Character substitutions / leet-speak (e.g. @ → a, 0 → o, 1/! → i, $ → s, 3 → e, 5 → s, 7/+ → t, 8 → b, 9/6 → g, # → h)
- Diacritics and accents (normalized via Unicode NFKD normalization)
- Zero-width characters and combining marks
- Separators, spaces, and punctuation inserted between letters
- Boundary protection: Short words (3 characters or fewer) are only matched on word/token boundaries to prevent false positives within innocent words.
Multilingual dictionary support: The built-in filter checks against word lists across multiple languages, including English, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Polish.
Server-side validation: Content validation is always enforced on the server during form processing, ensuring security even if client-side validation is bypassed.
Read-only handling: When a field or node is read-only, content filtering validation and visual highlights are disabled.

It supports the following controls:

xf:input (Text Field)
xf:textarea (Plain Text Area)

Form Builder usage

In Form Builder, the content filter is available as an appearance option on Text Field and Plain Text Area controls.

To enable it:

Select the Text Field or Plain Text Area in the form canvas.
Click the gear icon to open Control Settings.
In the Appearance dropdown, select With Content Filter.
Click Apply to close the dialog.

XForms usage

Appearance attribute

The component is generally activated using the appearance attribute on <xf:input> or <xf:textarea>:

<xf:input ref="comment" appearance="content-filter">
    <xf:label>Comment</xf:label>
    <xf:alert>This content appears to use inappropriate language. Please make corrections before submitting.</xf:alert>
</xf:input>

<xf:textarea ref="description" appearance="content-filter">
    <xf:label>Description</xf:label>
</xf:textarea>

The component automatically encapsulates the specified control.

You can also combine appearances on <xf:textarea> (for example, combining auto-sizing with the content filter):

<xf:textarea ref="description" appearance="xxf:autosize content-filter">
    <xf:label>Description</xf:label>
</xf:textarea>

Validation and error alerts

When inappropriate content is detected, the component triggers an internal constraint validation failure. The default English message is:

This content appears to use inappropriate language. Please make corrections before submitting.