Styled Text Editor Component

Function

a!styledTextEditorField( label, labelPosition, instructions, helpTooltip, value, saveInto, readOnly, required, requiredMessage, disabled, validations, validationGroup, showWhen, accessibilityText, height, sizeLimit, placeholder, allowedFormats )

Allows users to enter and view styled text. Text is stored with HTML formatting. To display text as a design element in your interface, use the rich text display component.

For more information on text input components and when to use each, see the Inputs best practices in the SAIL Design System.

Supported text formatting

The styled text editor supports the following text formatting:

• Bold text
• Italic text
• Underline text
• Strikethrough text
• Links
• Bulleted lists
• Numbered lists
• Tables

Additionally, it also supports the following Markdown formatting:

To keep the Markdown characters in your text without applying the formatting, after the formatting is applied, select the backspace key. The effect will be removed and the Markdown characters will be visible as plain text. This must be done right after the effect appears. After you move the cursor away from the formatted text, selecting backspace will no longer revert the formatting.

Parameters

Usage considerations

Inputting and formatting text

The styled text editor uses standard HTML to format text. For example, when a user applies underline formatting to text, behind the scenes the styled text editor wraps the value in HTML tags like this: <u>Text</u>.

Because of this, users can copy and paste text from other programs, such as documents and emails, and the supported text formatting will be preserved. Any unsupported formatting will be removed. For example, if someone copies and pastes a table, the table row and column formatting will be removed, but any supported formatting, such as bold text or links, will be preserved.

If users copy and paste or manually type HTML tags, the tags will be treated as plain text. When the value is stored, the less-than (<) and greater-than (>) symbols in the HTML tags will be replaced with their character reference—< for < and > for >.

For example, if a user types or pastes <u>Text</u>, it will be saved as <u>Text</u>. However, if a user copies "Text" into a styled text editor, it will be saved as <u>Text</u>.

When the text that the user is inputting reaches 100,000 bytes, the styled text editor will prevent them from entering more text.

Displaying styled text editor values

Displaying the read-only value

When you need to display the styled text editor value in an interface, display it in a styled text editor component with the readOnly parameter set to true. If you try to display it in any other component, it will display with the HTML tags.

The below screenshot shows the difference between displaying the value in rich text display, paragraph, and styled text editor components.

See Displaying read-only styled text editor values for guidance on displaying read-only values so that they are set apart from other formatted text in the interface.

Displaying the value in a grid

By default, displaying the value from a styled text editor component in a grid includes the HTML tags used for formatting.

If you need to display a styled text editor value in a grid, save an alternate value using stripHtml() to a separate field in your database. Use the alternate value for the sortField and value parameters in the grid column.

For considerations about using the value from a styled text editor in a grid, see Choosing which text input to use.

Displaying the value in emails

Because emails sent from Appian use HTML for formatting, you can use the styled text editor value in an Send E-Mail node and it will display with the user's formatting applied to the text.

Using parameters

Using the sizeLimit parameter

The size limit value

The value of the sizeLimit parameter is in bytes, not characters. Most characters are one byte. However, certain characters are more than one byte, including emojis and some characters from non-latin alphabets. So if you set the sizeLimit parameter to 4,000, you are allowing 4,000 bytes, not necessarily 4,000 characters.

Keep in mind that the HTML tags that are saved with the styled text editor value are included in the size limit. So even if a user enters exactly 4,000 characters, when they add any formatting, they will exceed the size limit.

Matching the size limit to the database field

Make sure the value you set for the sizeLimit parameter matches the length of the field in the CDT or record field.

• For a CDT field, set the Length to the same value you use for the sizeLimit parameter.
• For a record type with data sync enabled, if the sizeLimit parameter is more than 255, select Long Text for the field. Because the field character limit for synced record types is 4,000, be sure to set the sizeLimit parameter to 4,000 or less.

Size limit validations

When a user approaches the size limit, the styled text editor displays the remaining percentage of text they have left. When they exceed the size limit, it displays the percentage of how far they are over the size limit and a size limit validation message appears below the component.

Using a large size limit or no size limit

Whenever possible, set the sizeLimit parameter to 4,000 or less.

If you need to allow users to enter more text, avoid using the value in a process model. To save the value to a database, write it directly from the interface using a!writeToDataStoreEntity() or a!writeRecords() in the saveInto parameter of a button component.

Using the allowedFormats parameter to enable tables

By default, users are allowed to use all formats except tables. To enable tables, add the allowedFormats parameter and enter a list of all the valid values listed in the parameter description.

For example:

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{
  a!styledTextEditorField(
    label: "Styled Text Editor",
    labelPosition: "ABOVE",
    saveInto: {},
    sizeLimit: 4000,
    height: "MEDIUM",
    validations: {},
!    allowedFormats: {"BOLD", "ITALIC", "UNDERLINE", "STRIKETHROUGH", "LINK", "NUMBERED_LIST", "BULLETED_LIST", "TABLE"}
  )
}

Using the readOnly parameter

• If readOnly is set to true, the component's value displays without a box around it.
• If you pass the same local variable to value and saveInto when readOnly is set to false, you can use the user's input in the component to modify the interface.

Examples

Use the interactive editor below to test out your code:

Read-only styled text editor component

See Displaying read-only styled text editor values for guidance on displaying read-only values so that they are set apart from other formatted text in the interface.

Storing styled text editor value in a local variable

Feature compatibility

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