Version 5 supported

How to create lightweight form

Out of the box, Silverstripe CMS provides a robust and reusable set of HTML markup for FormField, however this can sometimes produce markup which is unnecessarily bloated.

For example, a basic search form. We want to use the Form API to handle the form but we may want to provide a totally custom template to meet our needs. To do this, we'll provide the class with a unique template through setTemplate().

If you just want to change the template for a given form field instead, you can call setTemplate() on the individual field.

// app/src/PageType/SearchPage.php
namespace App\PageType;

use Page;
use SilverStripe\Forms\FieldList;
use SilverStripe\Forms\Form;
use SilverStripe\Forms\FormAction;
use SilverStripe\Forms\TextField;

class SearchPage extends Page
{
    // ...

    public function SearchForm()
    {
        $fields = FieldList::create(
            TextField::create('q')
        );
        $actions = FieldList::create(
            FormAction::create('doSearch', 'Search')
        );

        $form = Form::create($this, __FUNCTION__, $fields, $actions);
        $form->setTemplate('SearchForm');

        return $form;
    }
}
<%-- app/templates/Includes/SearchForm.ss --%>
<form $FormAttributes>
    <fieldset>
        $Fields.dataFieldByName(q)
    </fieldset>

    <div class="Actions">
        <% loop $Actions %>$Field<% end_loop %>
    </div>
</form>

SearchForm.ss will be executed within the scope of the Form object so has access to any of the methods and properties on Form such as $Fields and $Actions.

To understand more about Scope or the syntax for custom templates, read the Templates guide.

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