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[Drupal 7] Form API

Drupal 7 will no longer be supported after January 5, 2025. Learn more and find resources for Drupal 7 sites

This guide covers Drupal 7 (Legacy). For the most recent standards and best practices, see the modern guide version: Form API

Collecting and processing user-submitted data is important.

Placing a form on a webpage and getting user responses are easy - getting them securely is harder. Drupal provides a standard, easy to use, easy to extend and secure way of adding forms to your Drupal website: Form API (FAPI).

This guide describes what you can do using the Form API.

Make sure you use your form values safely.

See also Form API Reference.

Creating a builder function to generate a form

Form workflow usually follows these stages:

Form API Internal Workflow Illustration

This workflow actually includes some of the nodeapi hooks as well as FAPI workflow to help illustrate the places where form elements can be

Forms API - Modify Form widgets with hook_field_widget_form_alter()

Widgets are the parts that make up forms, like textarea widgets, file upload widgets etc.

Forms API - Modify Forms with hook_form_alter()

Drupal 7 forms that modules create can be changed by other modules and even themes with the help of Drupal FAPI hooks system. See Drupal 7

#tree and #parents

Explain the use of #tree and #parents properties in a form array.

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How to use ajax in your Drupal forms without writing your own custom Javascript.

Building accessible forms

The following tips will improve the accessibility of your forms:
accessibility
forms

Create forms in a safe way to avoid cross-site request forgeries (CSRF)

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF or XSRF) is a process where a request is made to a site which takes an action when the user did not intend

Theming forms in your theme

An example about how to theme Drupal Commerce Check Out form:

How to Make a Simple Module with a Form and Menu Link

This guide will show you how to add a form to your website that is accessed through its own URL. This guide will go over module creation,

Create a custom User Registration form with FAPI D7

There are many reasons to create a custom User Registration form in Drupal, so I won't get into the "Why?" of it. This isn't a tutorial

Customize the default user registration form

Firstly, in your theme's root directory add the following to template.php. If the file does not exist, create it.

Moving node settings on the edit form

Drupal 7, together with Display Suite forms and the Fieldgroup module, gives developers the awesome ability to group fields together in

Add a markup element to a Views Exposed Filter form

Use a function in template.php to add a markup element to a Views Exposed filter form.

Avoid using data from $form_state['input']

In the Form API, using data from $form_state['input'], $_POST, and/or \Drupal::request()->request (Drupal 8) are a security risk.

Guide maintainers

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