Home > Form Elements > FormBlocks
FormBlocks
In Brief: An element that lets you save blocks of form elements from free-forms pages for quick application in any other form.
Dependencies: A standard form page.
Hints & Tricks: FormBlocks are groups of elements that retain all information of when they were saved as the group. This makes them very handy for easily placing large blocks of form content that would otherwise need to be recreated by hand. So for example, an address block, complete with SQL queries for states, an AJAX call for city drop downs, and so on--all of this is saved and recreated as needed.
A trick with this power however, is that FormBoss will not attempt to rename or otherwise modify any of the FormBlock items. Thus, we need to be careful about adding items that may have conflicting names with existing form elements. The best way to avoid such clashes is to simply name FormBlock items appropriately. For example, each FormBlock item would have a block_ appended to its Name/Value.
FormBlocks can only be created from free-form pages, though any FormBlock group can be applied to any page type, including sortable pages.
Finally, FormBlock items are saved per-page-type. That is, a FormBlock created for a form page will not be present in the list of items we can add to a confirmation page.
Important Note: For security reasons, FormBlocks will not work on a server where magic_quotes_gpc is enabled. To use this feature you'll need to first disable this setting in your php.ini file or server control panel.
General Usage
How to Use FormBlocks
FormBlocks must be created before they can be applied to a page. To create a FormBlock group, we must be in free-form mode. When in free-form mode, we lasso-select a group of form elements by clicking and dragging around one or more objects.
When the group is selected we then right-click and select: Create FormBlocks Group.
A window will appear asking us to name and describe the group of elements. When we complete this task we click Save Group.
Now when we click the FormBlocks button the group we just created will appear in a list. If we click this item the form element(s), in the exact same position and with the exact same properties as when created, will be placed into the current form page.