Form Element Layout

This module provides Form API and field setting for manipulating the layout of primitive form elements. Main features:

Form attribute for placing the form #description before the input element (#description_display).
Field configuration for moving the help text before or after the input element. This is useful for multi value fields or fields with a large input space where the help text falls far away from the field title.
Form attribute for adding additional classes to form #title and #descriptions (#title_classes and #description_classes).
Field labels and help texts have their own CSS classes (fel-field-label and fel-field-help-text) to separate them from additional #titles and #descriptions added by some field types. This is handy for themers and other modules that need to separate the configured texts from the rest.

Status

This is an initial port of the module. Two functions from ctools have been added and one section of code has been omitted in this version.

Functions added:

hook_ctools_plugin_type
hook_ctools_plugin_directory
ctools_include

Omitted:

code calling on ctools_get_plugins

Installation

Install this module using the official Backdrop CMS instructions at https://backdropcms.org/guide/modules.

Configuration

No module configuration is needed.

API

The main module, Form element layout (fel.module) provides the primitive rendering and behavior around the following form attributes:

#description_display: Where the #description should be rendered relative to its #children. Can be before or after. Default is before for fieldsets and after for the rest.
#description_classes: Array of additional classes to add to the #description when rendered. The default 'description' class is always added. It can be further customized by overriding the theme fel_form_element_description.
#title_classes: Array of additional classes to add to the #title when rendered.

Example usage for developers/themers:

$form['example'] = array(
  '#type' => 'textfield',
  '#title' => t("Example input"),
  '#description' => t("Example description of what this element does."),

  // Attributes honored by fel.module
  '#title_classes' => array('example'),
  '#description_classes' => array('important'),
  '#description_display' => 'before',
);

Supported field types

All element and field types core provide is supported by Form element layout fields (fel_fields.module). In addition some popular contrib field modules are supported:

[Address Field][]
[Date][]
[Email field][]
[Entity reference][]
[Field Collection Table][]
[Field Group][]
[Geofield][]
[Link][]
[Matrix][]
[Media][]
[Meta tags quick][]
[Multiupload filefield widget][]
[Multiupload imagefield widget][]
[Taxonomy Term Reference Tree Widget][]

Otherwise it has a fall-back mechanism that recursively will attach the appropriate Form API attributes for elements likely to be rendered. If it doesn't and your favorite module doesn't respond to the configuration, please issue a feature request for it!

Field modules may also provide support for fel_fields.module by adding a plugin for it. This is documented in the [Advanced help][] section of this module.

Support for the Field Group module is only partial in the sense that you cannot configure or code the position of the group's descriptions, but the description provided by the user will have its own classes

License

This project is GPL v2 software. See the LICENSE.txt file in this directory for complete text.

Current porting to Backdrop

Graham Oliver (github.com/Graham-72/)

Credits

Maintainers for Drupal:

Kåre Slettnes (kaare)

Acknowledgement

This port to Backdrop would not, of course, be possible without all the work done by the developers and maintainers of the Drupal module.

Graham-72 / fel