How to put a placeholder in a grid search_form to label the search field

[David Manns]

This used to work:

search_form=Form([

Field('account', 'reference CoA', default=request.query.get('account'),

requires=IS_EMPTY_OR(IS_IN_DB(db, 'CoA', '%(Name)s', zero="account?"))),

...

Field('notes', 'string',

widget=lambda field, value: INPUT(_name='notes', _type='text',

_value=request.query.get('notes'), _placeholder="notes?")),

Field('reference', 'string',

widget=lambda field, value: INPUT(_name='reference',

_type='text', _value=request.query.get('reference'), _placeholder="ref?"))

],

keep_values=True, formstyle=FormStyleBulma)

For the account Field, the IS_IN_DB zero parameter provides a nice way to identify the box in the form. This still works.

For the text search boxes, notes and reference, the only way to identify the form box I could find was to use a custom widget with a placeholder. This no longer works, I get an error "Error Ticket: The usage of custom widgets has changed. If you used to override the widget for a field, don't instantiate the class anymore: old: FormStyle.widgets["fieldname"] = RadioWidget() new: FormStyle.widgets["fieldname"] = RadioWidget"

[Massimo DiPierro]

We moved away from the idea of putting presentation information into the database model. It does not belong there and it can be confusing. 

You can do it with a custom Widget or you can do:

form = Form(...)

form.structure.find("#{tablename}_{fieldname}")[0]["_placeholder"] = "write something"

In your case since there is no table and the field is called "notes"

form.structure.find("#no_table_notes")[0]["_placeholder"] = "notes?"

It is a bit of a hack but works.

[laundmo]

>  We moved away from the idea of putting presentation information into the database model 

Could've fooled me:

Field.label
Field.represent
Field.requires
Field.required
Field.writable
Field.readable
Field.default

All those are (sometimes exclusively, sometimes partially) storing some king of presentation information

[David Manns]

Thanks, the hack works!

The documentation of custom fields I find totally incomprehensible. I suspect it was always inaccurate because it doesn't show the subclassing in it's example, and it also needs to be changed to reflect the new changes.