Select Field

The Select field creates a dropdown list with options.

Demo

Adding a Select Field

To learn how to add, edit, clone, move, resize, offset, or delete a select field, please click here.

Field Settings

To edit the settings for this field type, click the sett ings icon on the field itself. Click the Save & Close or Save button to save your changes. If you do not want to save your changes, you can click the Cancel button or click any other form element to close the field settings sidebar.

WS Form - Field Settings Icon

Basic

The basic tab contains settings that the majority of WS Form users will need to control a field. The settings are as follows:

Label

This is the label shown alongside the field. As well as entering a label into this field, you can also double click the label of the field in the editor. You should enter an easy-to-understand label for your field, for example, First Name or Email.

Show Label

If enabled the label will be shown on your form. If you do not want the label to appear for a particular field, uncheck this box.

Required

If checked this field will be required when the website visitor completes your form. Failure to complete the field if this is checked will result in a validation message appearing under the field prompting the user to complete the field correctly.

Required fields are indicated on your website with the word Required being adding to the label of the field. This can be changed in the form settings advanced tab.

Hidden

If checked the field will be hidden on the form. It can be shown again using conditional logic or your own JavaScript.

Multiple

Enabling this feature will enable the website visitor to select more than one option when submitting the form.

Selecting multiple options varies in different operating systems and browsers:

  • For Windows: Hold down the control (CTRL) button to select multiple options.
  • For Mac: Hold down the command button to select multiple options.

Because of the different ways of doing this, and because you have to inform the user that multiple selection is available, you may wish to consider using checkboxes instead.

Default Value

If a value is entered into this setting, the option containing that value will be selected by default. Note that this value needs to be the option value not the text shown for the option.

Comma separated values can be entered into this setting. Values will be trimmed.

Other ways of setting the default value, include:

  • Select rows in the Options tab using the Selected icon. Learn more
  • Set the default value using PHP. Learn more
  • Use the WordPress Filter Hook Data Source. Learn more

Size

Selects fields are typically one row tall. You can make a Select field taller by increasing this value. For example setting the size to 5 will make the Select field 5 rows tall. This feature is useful if you enable Multiple to allow the website visitor to select multiple options.

First Row Placeholder

The first row placeholder is used to add a single option at the top of the drop-down list, such as Select. It is assigned no value, so if the website visitor does not select an option, the field will be considered empty.

WS Form variables can be entered into this field.

Help Text

The help text setting enables you to add smaller text under the field to assist the website visitor in completing that field.

As well as inserting plain text into this field, WS Form also provides extensive functionality for adding character and word count information. Click here to learn more about this functionality.

WS Form variables can be entered into this field.

Auto Complete

Web browsers sometimes have features for helping users fill forms in, for example pre-filling the user’s address based on earlier user input. The autocomplete content attribute can be used to hint to the web browser how to, or indeed whether to, provide such a feature.

Use this setting if you would like to specify the value of the autocomplete attribute. Use the off option to prevent auto complete on the field.

Select2 (PRO only)

Enable

Enabling Select2 will initialize the jQuery Select2 plugin on the select field. This provides users with the ability to search for options by typing a keyword. Learn more.

The default Select2 configuration settings in WS Form are:

  • Clearable Selections – Enabled.
  • Language – Set to WordPress locale.
  • Placeholder – Populated with Placeholder Row text.

If you wish to use a custom Select2 configuration, click here.

Use AJAX

When this setting is checked, WS Form will retrieve matching results via AJAX. This means that the options are not pre-loaded on the page which can improve page loading times for larger datasets.

Note that if you are using the Cascade Use AJAX option, this setting will not be available because the field is already using AJAX to retrieve data.

Show All If No Results

When this setting is checked, WS Form will show all results if no matching results are found.

Enable Tagging (Shown if Multiple checked)

When this setting is checked, Select2 will dynamically create new options from text input by the user in the search box.

Minimum Input Length

Minimum number of characters required to start a search.

Maximum Input Length

Maximum number of characters that may be provided for a search term.

Select2 Custom Messages (PRO only)

Input Too Short

Enter a custom message that is shown when the input is too short. Only shown if you have entered a Minimum Input Length setting.

Select2 Default: Please enter #char_remaining or more character#char_plural Example: Input too short. Still need #char_remaining character#char_plural.

Input Too Long

Enter a custom message that is shown when the input is long short. Only shown if you have entered a Minimum Input Length setting.

Select2 Default: Please delete #char_over character#char_plural Example: Input too long. Please delete #char_over character#char_plural.

Searching

Enter a custom message that is shown when Select2 is searching via AJAX.

Select2 Default: Searching… Example: I am searching for #term, please wait.

No Results Found

Enter a custom message that is shown when no matching results are found.

Select2 Default: No results found Example: There were no results.

Error Loading

Enter a custom message that is shown when an error occurs when loading the results.

Select2 Default: No results found Example: An error occurred when loading the results.

Prefix / Suffix

The prefix and suffix settings allow you to add a prefix box and/or suffix box to the field.

WS Form - Prefix / Suffix

For example, you could add a unit of measure as a suffix, or an @ symbol as a prefix.

Accessibility

ARIA Label

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) defines ways to make web content and web applications more accessible to people with disabilities.

This setting enables you to define what text is made available to ARIA applications. This would, for example, provide a screen reader with specific text to read to someone with a disability.

The value of this setting defaults to your field label. If you would like to change this, enter a new value.

WS Form variables can be entered into this field.

Exclusions

Exclude From Emails

By default, WS Form uses the #email_submission variable in email templates. This provides a simple way of displaying all of the submitted fields in emails. Sometimes there might be a need to exclude a field from an email, for example, you might want to not include some introductory copy on a form, or hide a field you’re using with conditional logic to show or hide an element.

To hide a field from emails, check this box.

Other WS Form integrations may add exclusions in this section too, such as the WooCommerce integration which allows you to exclude certain fields from the cart entries.

Hidden Behavior

Always Include in Actions

This setting allows you to change the behavior of a field if the hidden setting is checked (See above), or if you set a field as hidden using conditional logic.

The normal behavior for a field that has been hidden is that it will not be included if an action has a Clear Hidden Fields setting enabled. For example, if you have a Send Email action, WS Form will not include fields that are hidden.

If this setting is checked, this field will always be included in actions if it is hidden.