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Limit the Amount of Text in a Text Area or Rich Text Form Element

Participants Database has two form elements for large blocks of text. In some cases, you will want to limit the number of characters your users can input. This is fairly simple to do on the frontend by using the HTML5 “maxlength” attribute. The maxlength attribute prevents any input to a textarea (or other input) beyond… (read)

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Using the PDb_Template Helper Class in a Custom List Template

The PDb_Template helper class makes setting up a custom display for a Participants Database record much easier in situations where you don’t want to just loop through the values. Sometimes you don’t want to treat each value the same, you want to lay out each value in a way that fits the information better. This… (read)

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Changing the Length of the Private ID

Participants Database uses a “private id” value as a key for users to edit their own record. The plugin uses a short 5-character code for this purpose, it’s not meant to be airtight security, just something impractical to guess. Some administrators may want to use a larger term for their install, and it’s possible to… (read)

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Creating Your Own “With Selected” Actions in the PDB Admin

Participants Database has a simple kind of mass-edit functionality in the backend List Participants page. If one or more records are selected in the list, a function can be performed on all of them. Normally, this is things like deleting records or setting the “approved” flag. Other Participants Database add-ons add their own functions to… (read)

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Understanding Possible Data Loss when Changing Field Form Element Type

When a field is defined in Participants Database, it creates a data column in the database table to store the information that field will collect. The way databases work, it’s more efficient to tell it what kind of data you intend to store. So, when a field’s form element is defined, the “datatype” in the… (read)