Rich text field

RichTextFieldDefinition renders a rich text editor. This is a custom Magnolia field that implements the CKEditor component.

This rich text field definition is part of the Magnolia 6 UI framework. The fully qualified class name is info.magnolia.ui.field.RichTextFieldDefinition.

If you work with the Magnolia 5 UI framework, see Rich text field for Magnolia 5 UI instead.

Example definition

richText:
  label: Text editor
  $type: richTextField
  height: 500
  tables: true
  source: true

Field properties

Field-specific properties

Property Description

alignment

optional, default is false

Allows text alignment for paragraphs. When true, this property adds alignment buttons (left, center, right, and justify) to the toolbar.

colors

optional

Colors displayed in the color selector. Comma-separated hexadecimal color codes without the # prefix (for example, 00923E,F8C100,28166F). See colorButton_colors for more information.

configJsFile

optional

Location of a custom CKEditor configuration file.

See Customization for more information.

fonts

optional

List of font names displayed in the font selector. Separate entries with a semi-colon (for example, Arial/Arial,sans-serif;Times New Roman/Times New Roman,serif). It is possible to have more than one font for each entry separated by a comma. A display name may be optionally defined by prefixing the entries with the name and the slash character. See font_names for more information.

fontSizes

optional

List of fonts sizes displayed in the font selector. Separate entries with a semi-colon (for example, 16/16px;24/24px;48/48px). Any CSS-supported size can be used (for example, 12px, 2.3em, 130%, larger or x-small). A display name may be optionally defined by prefixing the entries with the name and the slash character. For example, Bigger Font/14px will be displayed as Bigger Font in the list and outputted as 14px. See fontSize_sizes for more information.

height

optional, default is -1

Height of the field (including the toolbar). This property accepts an integer (to denote a value in pixels). Value of -1 means that the component will take the minimum necessary space.

images

optional, default is false

Allows images from the DAM. When true, this property adds an image button to the toolbar. The user can define the size and alignment of the image and some metadata.

lists

optional, default is true

Allows bulleted and numbered lists. When false, this property removes list buttons from the toolbar.

source

optional, default is false

Allows toggling between text and HTML editing. When true, this property adds a source button to the toolbar.

tables

optional, default is false

Allows tables. When true, this property adds a table button to the toolbar.

linkFieldDefinitions

optional

List of JCR or DAM link field definitions. It can be used to provide custom chooser dialogs.

Example configuration
linkFieldDefinitions:
  website:
    $type: pageLinkField
  dam:
    $type: damLinkField

Common simple field properties

Property Description

name

required

Name of the field definition item. Derived from the configured node name. Use alphanumeric characters without spaces.

class

required (unless $type is used)

Type of the field definition item. The value must be a fully qualified class name and a subtype of info.magnolia.ui.field.FieldDefinition. See Field types for possible values.

$type

You can use this as a shortcut for class if the definition class is annotated with info.magnolia.ui.field.FieldType. The proper value is defined by the annotation.

Example class annotation
@FieldType("textField")
public class TextFieldDefinition extends ConfiguredFieldDefinition<String> {
...
}

See Field types for possible values.

type

required, default is java.lang.String

Data type of the field. Use the fully qualified class name. See PropertyType for possible values.

A default type is typically hard-coded in each definition class. You only need to add this property if you want to override the default implementation.

In text fields, make sure that type has a value matching the type of data you entered (for example, java.lang.Long for long values) and that converterClass is set accordingly.

Example definition
text:
  $type: textField
  type: java.lang.Long
  converterClass: com.vaadin.data.converter.StringToLongConverter

converterClass

optional

Converts values between the presentation (UI) and model (stored data). The property must extend com.vaadin.data.Converter. Available classes:

  • info.magnolia.ui.editor.converter.JcrNodeToIdentifierConverter

  • info.magnolia.ui.editor.converter.JcrNodeToPathConverter

  • info.magnolia.ui.editor.converter.JcrNodeToWorkspaceAndIdConverter

  • info.magnolia.ui.editor.converter.JcrPathToIdentifierConverter

com.vaadin.data.converter.StringToBigDecimalConverter and com.vaadin.data.converter.StringToDoubleConverter always round the presentation value by default. For non-rounding converters, use the following classes instead:

  • info.magnolia.ui.field.converter.NonRoundingStringToBigDecimalConverter

  • info.magnolia.ui.field.converter.NonRoundingStringToDoubleConverter

conversionErrorMessage

optional, default is translated conversion.message.error key

Message shown when there is an error in the conversion process. The value can be literal or a key of a message bundle.

defaultValue

optional

Pre-filled default value displayed in the field. The value can be overwritten by the user. Use alphanumeric characters.

This is only applied only when creating a new item, not for existing items.

For defaultValue to work, the populate property in OpenDialogActionDefinition must be set to false.

description

optional

Help text displayed when the user clicks the help icon. The value can be literal or a key of a message bundle.

factoryClass

optional

Defines the factory class that initializes and builds the Vaadin form field. The default factory class depends on the particular field.

The value must be a fully qualified class name and a subtype of info.magnolia.ui.field.FieldFactory.

fieldBinderClass

optional

Defines the binder class that applies configuration parameters from the field.

i18n

optional, default is false

Enables i18n authoring support, which allows editors to write foreign-language or regionally targeted content. A two-letter language identifier (en, de, fr, etc.) is displayed on controls where i18n is set to true.

label

optional

Field label displayed to editors. The value can be literal or a key of a message bundle.

If you do not provide the property, Magnolia will fall back to a generated i18n key.

If you do not want to have any label, set the property to an empty string such as label: "" in YAML.

readOnly

optional, default is false

Makes the field uneditable.

required

optional, default is false (not relevant for checkbox field)

Makes the field required. When true, an asterisk is displayed next to the field label.

When false, empty values are accepted as valid and any field validator is ignored.

requiredErrorMessage

optional, default is translated validation.message.required key

Error message shown when required is set to true and the user saves an empty field. The value can be literal or a key of a message bundle.

styleName

optional

Additional style information for an editor property definition item applied to the element when the form is rendered. The value can be a CSS class or a list of CSS classes separated by white spaces.

The style name will be rendered as an HTML class name, which can be used in a CSS definition. The class name is added to the field by calling the Vaadin method addStyleName.

The referenced class can be defined in:

validators

optional

List of field validator definition items. Any value must be a subtype of info.magnolia.ui.field.FieldValidatorDefinition.

See Field validators for more information.

Decoding text

CKEditor produces HTML such as <p> elements for paragraphs. However, text stored in JCR usually escapes HTML code. To render text that originates from a rich text field, you need to decode the stored content to make sure the HTML tags are rendered properly again.

Here is how to decode the content object and get the desired property from it:

${cmsfn.decode(content).text!""}

See cmsfn: Decode HTML for more information.

Inserting hyperlinks

CKEditor provides a tabbed dialog for inserting links (such as anchor tags) into rich text. The fields of this dialog map to the following element attributes:

Field ID Attribute

Id

id

Name

name

Language direction

dir

Language code

lang

Access key

accesskey

Tab index

tabindex

Advisory title

title

Advisory content type

type

Stylesheet classes

class

The style field expects inline style values to consist of one or more tuples with the format "name : value", separated by semi-colons.

Linked resource charset

charset

Relationship

rel

Force download

download

Renders an empty attribute with no value.
Because a rich text editor adds HTML to your content, the HTML will be indexed by search engines along with the content.

Customization

A custom configuration of CKEditor allows you to control the extraPlugins setting, but it also means you need to add the magnolialink and magnoliaFileBrowser plugins to your file. See the default config-magnolia.js for how to include the plugins.

If you use a custom configuration file, Magnolia will ignore all the other configured properties.

A custom configuration file can be located in the resources workspace, file system or classpath (for example, /.resources/ckeditor/config-magnolia.js).

The default configuration files can be found in magnolia-ui-framework-jcr/src/main/resources/mgnl-resources/ckeditor/:

  • config-magnolia.js (Git): Magnolia configuration file.

  • config-default.js (Git): CKEditor configuration file.

Using the CKEditor Maximize plugin may lead to display issues with the external Link to Magnolia page and Link to DAM document Magnolia functions. It is highly recommended that you use the external Expand Magnolia function instead.

Use case example: Latin characters

Suppose you want to change how a field encodes data, in particular, so that a text field uses Latin characters. You can achieve this by creating or editing a custom configJsFile file. Instructions to do so and illustrations are given below.

  1. Add the config.entities_latin = false; property to the /ckeditor/config-magnolia.js custom file.

    See how to do it…​

    Editing the config-magnolia.js file

  2. Update the textImage.yaml mkt2 component dialog file to reference the updated configuration file (e.g., configJsFile: /.resources/ckeditor/config-magnolia.js).

    See how to do it…​

    Editing the textImage.yaml file

  3. Create a page and add a new Text and image component, including Latin characters (e.g., boîte à lettres). Check that the characters are displayed properly.

  4. Go to the JCR app and find the page and text field you created. Check that the characters in the value field are correctly displayed.

    Inspecting Latin characters in the JCR

External Magnolia functions

Rich text field toolbar

Function Icon Description

Link to Magnolia page

Link to Magnolia page

Opens a chooser dialog where you can link to a page in the website workspace.

Link to DAM document

Link to DAM document

Opens a chooser dialog where you can link to a document in the dam workspace.

Expand

Expand

Expands the rich text field.

Light rich text field

Light rich text field is a special type of rich text field provided by the Content Editor module.

Compared to the rich text field, the light rich text field has limited formatting functions. In addition, the field can only be used as a content block in a custom content editor.

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