The textarea form field type provides a text area for entry of multi-line text. If the field has a value saved, this value is displayed when the page is first loaded. If not, the default value (if any) is selected.

• type (mandatory) must be textarea.
• name (mandatory) is the unique name of the field.
• label (mandatory) (translatable) is the descriptive title of the field.
• rows (mandatory) is the height of the visible text area in lines. If omitted the width is determined by the browser. The value of rows does not limit the number of lines that may be entered.
• cols (mandatory) is the width of the visible text area in characters. If omitted the width is determined by the browser. The value of cols does not limit the number of characters that may be entered.
• default (optional) (not translatable) is the default value.
• description (optional) (translatable) is text that will be shown as a tooltip when the user moves the mouse over the drop-down box.
• class (optional) is a CSS class name for the HTML form field. If omitted this will default to 'text_area'.
• filter (optional) allow the system to save certain html tags or raw data.

Example XML field definition:

<field name="mytextarea" type="textarea" default="default" label="Enter some text" description="" rows="10" cols="5" />

Use the raw filter to ensure that html code is preserved when the form is processed:

<field name="mytextarea" type="textarea" default="default" label="Enter some html" description="" rows="10" cols="5" filter="raw"/>

[edit] Tips

• If you need to line break just encode <br /> in the XML config file like this: <br />
• If you need a new line character in your default value, add 
 to the default parameter

[edit] See also

• Text form field type
• List of standard form field types