[Resolved] Do hidden parent post type input fields need to be of the select type?

[Author]

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[aaronM-9]

Pretty much all my CRED forms that set a "belongs" parent post ID are hidden and populated using a URL parameter. However, the HTML generated is still a select box even though it's hidden. I'm now realizing that some of the HTML that could get generated as the site grows might become incredibly long with hundreds (someday thousands?) of useless <option>'s that don't even get used because they're all hidden.

Is there a way to make the hidden field just a text line instead of a select box? For example:

[cred_field field='_wpcf_belongs_product-listing_id' value='' urlparam='productid' class='hidden' output='bootstrap']

becomes...

<input type="hidden" name="_wpcf_belongs_product-listing_id" value="999">

NOT...

<select name="_wpcf_belongs_product-listing_id">
  <option value="1">Item 1</option>
  <option value="2">Item 2</option>
  ...
  <option value="999" selected="selected">Item 999</option>
</select>

If this isn't currently possible, can you add it as a feature request? For some of the functionality I'm building into the site, I suspect some of this HTML will get quite large unnecessarily. Apologies if there is some obvious way to do this that I somehow missed.

Thanks.

- Aaron

[Luo Yang]

Dear Aaron,

You are right, there isn't such a built-in feature. as a workaround you can use a generic hidden field to replace the select dropdown field, for example:

[cred_generic_field field='_wpcf_belongs_product-listing_id' type='hidden' class='' urlparam='productid']
{
"required":0,
"validate_format":0,
"default":"0"
}
[/cred_generic_field]

https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/cred-shortcodes/#cred_generic_field

Then update the field value with CRED action hook "cred_save_data", for example:

add_action('cred_save_data', 'my_save_data_action',10,2);
function my_save_data_action($post_id, $form_data)
{
    // if a specific form
    if ($form_data['id']==123)
    {
        if (isset($_POST['_wpcf_belongs_product-listing_id']))
        {
            // add it to saved post meta
            update_post_meta($post_id, '_wpcf_belongs_product-listing_id', $_POST['_wpcf_belongs_product-listing_id'], true);
        }
    }
}

https://toolset.com/documentation/programmer-reference/cred-api/#cred_save_data

[aaronM-9]

Thanks - I'll start doing this moving forward and if the feature becomes built in someday then I will go through and eliminate the excess PHP.

- Aaron

[Luo Yang]

You are welcome