Selection and Multi Select

In addition to text boxes and the string field, selection and multi-select are commonly used field types. They allow site visitors to choose a selection from a list, drop-down menu, radio buttons or checkboxes.

Selection Field

As before, you must be in your Form Folder to add additional fields. Choose Selection Field from the list in the Add New drop-down menu.

In addition to the regulars like Field Label and Field Help, there is Options and Presentation Widget to look at.

Options

Options is for establishing what the options in the field are going to be. Each option should be seperated with a line break.

Presentation Widget

The Presentation Widget is the kind of graphic used for gathering the input: you can choose either Radio Button or Selection List (a drop-down menu). The option Flexible simply means that you leave it up to PloneFormGen to decide which widget is most appropriate. Basically, if you have more than three choices it will use the selection list. Less than three will appear as radio buttons.

Value|Label

Entering Options can be done in one of two ways. Either "one line per option" or the "Value|Label format". One line per option is described above, but what about Value|Label?

Let's say you want to present some choices, but the actual value recorded by the form is different than what the form submitter sees on the screen. For example, let's say that you want to ask a site visitor what county they live in, but in your prorgam work you classify counties into regions like "Northwest" and "Southeast". Instead of asking the visitor to identify which region they live in (which some might get wrong or misunderstand) you could present them a list of counties.

In the above example you would format Options like this:

• Northwest|Jefferson
• Northwest|Island
• Northwest|Mason
• Southeast|Columbia
• Southeast|Asotin
• Etc . . .

In this example, if a visitor selects "Jefferson" as their county, the form would record the entry as "Northwest".

Multi-Select

Multi-select is very similar to a Selection Field except that you have an additional widget (the checkbox) and your site visitors can choose many options from one list.

If you plan to use the Selection List widget for a multi-select field, it is helpful to include a note about the Control key in Field Help. In order to actually choose more than one option in the list, you must hold down the control key (CRTL) on your keyboard and then click to select/de-select options. Because of this, it is most often the best choice to use the Checkbox widget instead of Selection List for a multi-select field.