Referencing Form Fields in JavaScript

Referencing the Current Form

In the HTML document object model (DOM), the current form is named _sdForm.
This line of code gets a reference to it and puts it in the form variable:

var form = _sdForm;

Accessing Fields

To find the name of a field in the platform:

1. Go to > Customization > Objects > {object} > Fields
2. Find the label of the field you're interested in
3. Get its name from the Field Name column
   That name can then be used in the JavaScript code.

All fields can be accessed using the platform's JavaScript functions, as described in the Field Types section below.

The most commonly accessed fields (TextField, TextArea, Date, DateTime, Time, and URL) can be accessed using _sdForm[0]. For example, this line of code gets a reference to the first_name field, and puts it in the variable fName_field:

var fName_field = _sdForm[0].first_name;

Fields have two properties that you can access in JavaScript:

• name: the name of the field
• value: the value of the field

So this line retrieves the value of the field:

var fName = fName_field.value;

As does this longer version:

var fName = _sdForm[0].first_name.value;

Other fields can be accessed using the platform's JavaScript functions.
For a complete list, see the Field Types section below.

Updating Fields

The method used to update a field depends on the field type. All of the methods have the general form:

set...Value(_sdForm, field, value);

Here are examples of the different methods:

setTextFieldValue(_sdForm, ”first_name”, ”Adam”);
setPickListValue(_sdForm, ”first_name”, ”Adam”);
setMultiPickListValue(_sdForm, ”first_name”, [”new”,”closed”]); 
    // value is an array of strings
setRadioButtonValue(_sdForm, ”first_name”, ”Adam”);
setCheckboxState((_sdForm, ”first_name”, true);  // checked
setCheckboxState((_sdForm, ”first_name”, false); // unchecked
setLookupValue(_sdForm, "project_number", "123456", "My Project");
    // where 123456 is the record ID of the target record 
    // "My Project" is the value of the record locator field(s) for that record

Field Type Reference

The following table shows how to access and update the different field types, where:

• _sdForm is the current form reference

Type	Getter	Setter
Auto Number	n/a	n/a
Checkbox	getCheckBoxState(_sdForm, field) Parameter: field - Id of element Returns: true or false	Method Name is setCheckboxState(form,field,state) Parameter: field: Id of element state: true or false
Currency
Custom Control	n/a	n/a
Date
Datetime
Dependent Picklist
Image	n/a	n/a
Radio Buttons
Rich Text Area	n/a	n/a
TextArea
TextField
Time
URL

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Learn More

• Global JavaScript Variables