Skip to main content
Version: 5.2 (Current)

URL Form Field

The url form field type provides a text box for data entry which filters to fully qualified URLs. This field essentially is a text field with the type of url. If a fully qualified url (that is one with a scheme and domain such as http://example.com) is entered and it uses idn (that is uses characters that are non ascii such as ê or Ψ) it will translate the url into punycode prior to saving. This ensures that the url will work as intended regardless of environment. If you want to render field data in idn you should wrap it with the conversion method :

use Joomla\CMS\String\PunycodeHelper;
$value = PunycodeHelper::urlToPunycode($value);
  • type (mandatory) must be url.
  • name (mandatory) is the unique name of the field.
  • label (mandatory) (translatable) is the field html label.
  • description (optional) (translatable) is the field description.
  • default (optional) (not translatable) is the default value.
  • size (optional) is the width of the text box in characters. If omitted the width is determined by the browser. The value of size does not limit the number of characters that may be entered.
  • maxlength (optional) limits the number of characters that may be entered.
  • class (optional) is a CSS class name for the HTML form field. If omitted this will default to 'text_area'.
  • readonly (optional) The field cannot be changed and will automatically inherit the default value. (Possible values: "true", "1", "readonly" to set to true)
  • disabled (optional) The field cannot be changed and will automatically inherit the default value - it will also not submit. (Possible values: "true", "1", "readonly" to set to true)
  • required (optional) The field must be filled before submitting the form. (Possible values: "true", "1", "readonly" to set to true)
  • filter (optional) is the filter to apply.
  • hint (optional) The text displayed in the html placeholder element, usually a lighter coloured hint displayed inside an blank field.
  • validate (optional) makes a validation.
  • relative (optional) set to true for relative URLs.

Implemented by: libraries/src/Form/Field/UrlField.php

Example XML parameter definition​

<field
        ame="mytextvalue" 
        type="url" 
        default="http://www.example.com" 
        label="Enter a URL" 
        description="" 
        size="10"
/>

Both a url rule and a url input filter can assist with this ensuring that valid url data are entered into this field.

See also​