How to create an input field without a label

28 comments baked

• theman March 01, 2007 at 16:44

  I was wondering if you knew how to position a label for a checkbox? It always seems to appear to the right of a checkbox, can you make it appear to the left?

• cakebaker March 01, 2007 at 17:33

  @theman: Yes, that’s possible, CSS is your friend. Something like

  label {
  float: left;
  }
  

  or

  input[type=checkbox] {
  float: right;
  }
  

  should do the trick.

• cdomigan March 01, 2007 at 18:06

  Is it possible to set “label”=>false to be the default behaviour for all form elements?

  Chris

• KesheR March 01, 2007 at 18:12

  I had to do something similar to disable the “div” it added.

• walkerhamilton March 01, 2007 at 18:35

  Oh thank god.

  I was having some problems with that and tried the first two you did but it never occured to me to try the last one.

• Derick March 02, 2007 at 04:19

  @cdomigan: what i usually do with such things in 1.1.x.x is to create a helper which extends the HtmlHelper (or FormHelper in your case) then copy the function which you wish to be “different” from the original helper file to your newly created one. seems like a better way for me though it might not be the best way (i don’t know).

• Miroslav Bazitov March 02, 2007 at 15:23

  Hi Derick

  I have issue with submit method in the html helper – the output was “input” but I prefer “button”.

  I thought to make new helper witch extends HtmlHelper, but I wondered then if I need to use the newly created helper or the HtmlHelper.

  I want to modify the submit method of the HtmlHelper, but without touching anything in the /cake dir. I prefer to stick to HtmlHelper, because it’s load automaticaly.

  Thanks in advance
  Miro

• Derick March 02, 2007 at 21:47

  @miro: i guess it is sort of a preference thing.. like i’ve set labels on the checkboxes in my extended HtmlHelper etc. so I always use the extended version instead of the HtmlHelper.. this way you don’t need to edit the core files..

• Sam July 10, 2007 at 12:44

  Dear god thank you so much, i had tried loads of other options

  sometimes i think the name FormHelper is very misleading, it’s creating more work than the typing it saves!

• cakebaker July 11, 2007 at 09:02

  @Sam: I am glad to hear this article helped you :)

  Yeah, sometimes using the helper is more work than the traditional way and in some cases I even forgo to use the helper.

• gad August 13, 2007 at 16:39

  thx for this quick solution.

• cakebaker August 14, 2007 at 17:07

  @gad: Good to hear this article was helpful for you :)

• Richard Brown January 14, 2008 at 23:37

  Thank you! I was looking all over for this. It was driving me nuts. I wish the documentation for 1.2 was a bit more instructive.

• cakebaker January 16, 2008 at 12:29

  @Richard: I’m glad this article was helpful for you!

• Neil February 02, 2008 at 02:26

  Thanks you! this was helpful but is there also a way to change the lable text?

  for example I tried this with no success:
  echo $form->input(‘author’, array(‘type’ => ‘text’, ‘lable’ => ‘Name of the Author:’));

• cakebaker February 02, 2008 at 10:16

  @Neil: Yes, it is possible. Simply change “lable” to “label” in your example, and it should work ;-)

• Gayatri February 11, 2008 at 07:29

  Thank you!!!
  This solution may look simple but, it can get you stuck for quite some time…it took me a day until I found this blog!

  Thank you once again :)

• cakebaker February 11, 2008 at 18:44

  @Gayatri: I am glad this article helped you :)

• Jon May 28, 2008 at 06:09

  Thanks for this, your site here has been a huge use to me in the last week. I’m just learning and starting off on 1.2… the documentation is weak.
  they say $form->input has 2 arguments, the second being $options, but they don’t tell you what options you can use…

  do you know if theres a way to override cakes method of splitting up field names at the case? I.e. I have a set of field names DLCI[1-7]. When the $form->input helper does its thing, it makes the label D L C I1 and so on…

• cakebaker May 29, 2008 at 17:00

  @Jon: Thanks for your comment!

  I think you could write your own helper which extends the FormHelper, and then override the label() method. But it is a bit an ugly solution. It is probably easier if you provide an explicit value for the label with:

  $form->input('MyModel.DLCI1', array('label' => 'DLCI1'));
  

  Hope that helps!

• Jon May 30, 2008 at 00:30

  @cakebaker: thanks for the reply. I came to the same conclusion as the one you suggested… unfortunately.

  Is there a suggested naming conventions for fields that have acronyms (the system uses a lot of techish fields (IP, DLCI, TCP, etc) but I’d like to not have to override all the names. perhaps theres a built in alias function in cake?

  I’m trying to get away from building static views. I’d like to be able to build the form according to the db schema, possibly with a few alterations (order of the fields). On that note, do you have any ideas of a configuration model to have a bunch of user configuration tables to control things like :
  - drop downs (what fields to use them on, what options to allow, and the order of the options)
  - fields to include in reports, forms, tables, etc. (what fields to omit in forms, or reports, but still include in a different table)

  if this doesn’t make sense, it may be a result of me having to write it again since i didn’t include my name and email in the original post (p.s. you should have some sorta post back method).

  i built a web app that i’m now trying to migrate into the cake framework but a combo of me being a bit of a noob (only a year of self taught programming) and the spotty documentation is making it tougher than i first anticipated. any help you can offer would be swell.

• cakebaker May 30, 2008 at 17:53

  @Jon: I’m not aware of such an alias function. Maybe it is worth to open an enhancement ticket for Inflector::underscore() to make it more sophisticated. But I’m not sure whether this will get implemented, so I think it is probably easier to write a custom helper, which internally calls the FormHelper in the way shown in my previous comment.

  Regarding configuration model, I would probably create a model for each configuration table, and then have a special configurations controller. But at first I would ask myself whether this additional complexity is really necessary and worth the effort.

  What do you mean with “post back method”?

• Jon May 30, 2008 at 19:12

  @cakebaker: Thanks for your suggestions.

  re: post back – I wrote out a whole comment, about as long as the last one, but when I submitted, I forgot the mand. fields. I got a message saying to fill the mand. fields, but the message just stayed there (it was the only thing on the screen) and I wasn’t redirected back to my post. I clicked back button and my writing was gone and I had to re-write.

  Thanks again for your responses and your blog. It’s an excellent resource for someone like me who’s beginning what seems to be a long journey in php programming, and the cake framework.

• cakebaker June 02, 2008 at 16:46

  @Jon: Thanks for your explanation, now it is clear what you meant. I hope I can fix it.

  Anyway, good luck on your journey :)

• Krishna December 19, 2009 at 16:15

  Thanks for your suggestion. I would appreciate it if you could give a clue about this.
  I have been trying to validate form using cakephp. Basically in the model i have validation code like this:
  

  var $validate = array(
      	'username'=>array(
      		'rule'=>'alphaNumeric',
  			'required'=>true,
      		'message'=>'Please enter the username',
      	)
  	);

  
  and in the view i have this:
  

  <h2>Add User</h2>
  <?php echo $form->create('User', array('url' => '/users/add'));?>
  <?php echo $form->input('username', array('size' => '20','label'=>'User Name:'));?>
  <?php
  echo '<div><input type="submit" value="Submit" /> or '.$html->link('Cancel', array('action' => 'index')).'</div>';
  echo $form->end();
  ?>
  <code>
  <h2>Add User</h2>
  <?php echo $form->create('User', array('url' => '/users/add'));?>
  <?php echo $form->input('username', array('size' => '20','label'=>'User Name:'));?>
  <?php
  echo '<div><input type="submit" value="Submit" /> or '.$html->link('Cancel', array('action' => 'index')).'</div>';
  echo $form->end();
  ?>

  
  When I hit submit with empty usename i get the error message ‘Please enter the username’ but it is always black. I was trying to make it red, but could not succeed. I noticed the problem was with class=’required’ as seen in the view source:
  

  <form method="post" action="/AuthUsers/users/add">
  <fieldset style="display:none;">
  <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="POST" />
  </fieldset>
  <div class="input text required error">
  <label for="UserUsername">User Name:</label>
  <input name="data[User][username]" type="text" size="20" maxlength="20" value="" id="UserUsername" class="form-error" />
  <div class="error-message">Please enter the username</div>
  </div>
  <div>
  <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> or <a href="/AuthUsers/users">Cancel</a>
  </div>
  </form>

  Anny clue as to how i can have the error message displayed in red color but the label in black color?
  Krishna

• cakebaker December 21, 2009 at 18:14

  @Krishna: Hm, what did you try to make it red? Did you try it in the way shown below?

  .error-message {color: red;}
  

• Axel December 25, 2009 at 18:26

  easy, thank you!

• cakebaker December 28, 2009 at 17:43

  @Axel: You are welcome :)

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