By zoon_unit on

The body text edit box when editing a node is only big enough to display three lines of text and I have to drag the box down every time before editing. How can one change the default size of the edit box to something more "practical?"

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

zokazola’s picture

zokazola commented

I have asked the same thing and would love to know! Anyone?

julester23’s picture

julester23 commented

So far, the best way I've found is to edit modules/node/node.pages.inc - of course I'm sure this affects all content-types :(.
Look for $form['body'] around line 290 and change the rows below.

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

The drupal way to do this (if you're using a phptemplate based theme) would be to use the theme_textarea theme function by adding the following to the template.php file for your theme and altering as you wish:

<?php
function phptemplate_textarea($element) {

  if ($element['#name'] =='body'){   
      $element['#rows'] = 35;
  }

  $class = array('form-textarea');
  if ($element['#resizable'] !== FALSE) {
    drupal_add_js('misc/textarea.js');
    $class[] = 'resizable';
  }

  $cols = $element['#cols'] ? ' cols="'. $element['#cols'] .'"' : '';
  _form_set_class($element, $class);
  return theme('form_element', $element, '<textarea'. $cols .' rows="'. $element['#rows'] .'" name="'. $element['#name'] .'" id="'. $element['#id'] .'" '. drupal_attributes($element['#attributes']) .'>'. check_plain($element['#value']) .'</textarea>');
}
?>

===
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." -- Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." -- Benjamin Franklin
"Search is your best friend." -- Worldfallz

bwv’s picture

bwv commented

Hi Worldfallz. Thanks for this pointer. I am trying to apply this to a d6 theme. Here is the relevant code from the API link you provided above. My question is, where would I add the code that limits the number of rows in the default body field to, say 5 rows/ And can I make the field not resizeable? Thanks for your kind assistance. 

<?php
function theme_textarea($element) {
  $class = array('form-textarea');

  // Add teaser behavior (must come before resizable)
  if (!empty($element['#teaser'])) {
    drupal_add_js('misc/teaser.js');
    // Note: arrays are merged in drupal_get_js().
    drupal_add_js(array('teaserCheckbox' => array($element['#id'] => $element['#teaser_checkbox'])), 'setting');
    drupal_add_js(array('teaser' => array($element['#id'] => $element['#teaser'])), 'setting');
    $class[] = 'teaser';
  }

  // Add resizable behavior
  if ($element['#resizable'] !== FALSE) {
    drupal_add_js('misc/textarea.js');
    $class[] = 'resizable';
  }

  _form_set_class($element, $class);
  return theme('form_element', $element, '<textarea cols="'. $element['#cols'] .'" rows="'. $element['#rows'] .'" name="'. $element['#name'] .'" id="'. $element['#id'] .'" '. drupal_attributes($element['#attributes']) .'>'. check_plain($element['#value']) .'</textarea>');
}
?>

----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://classicvinyl.biz
http://music.classicvinyl.biz
http://association.drupal.org/user/1207

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Hmmm... just a guess, but try this:

<?php
function theme_textarea($element) {
  $class = array('form-textarea');

  // Add teaser behavior (must come before resizable)
  if (!empty($element['#teaser'])) {
    drupal_add_js('misc/teaser.js');
    // Note: arrays are merged in drupal_get_js().
    drupal_add_js(array('teaserCheckbox' => array($element['#id'] => $element['#teaser_checkbox'])), 'setting');
    drupal_add_js(array('teaser' => array($element['#id'] => $element['#teaser'])), 'setting');
    $class[] = 'teaser';
  }

  if ($element['#name'] =='body'){  
      $element['#rows'] = 5;
  }
}
?>

Post back if you have any problems.

===
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz

bwv’s picture

bwv commented

Thank you... unfortunately, it does not appear to work (I changed "theme_textarea" in line one to "name-of-my-theme_textarea"). After inserting the code in template.php, the body field did not change size. Any other suggestions?

I would prefer to create a CCK textarea for this purpose, and would be able to size that as I wanted. But I need to use the maxlength module for the description field to limit to 500 characters the amount of text a user can input. Maxlength does not, from what I can tell, work with CCK textfields, however. So I am, for stylistic purposes, trying to reduce the size of the body field.

Its not critical, just for the sake of appearance. Thanks for your help. regards, david
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://classicvinyl.biz
http://music.classicvinyl.biz
http://association.drupal.org/user/1207

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

No worries-- that was just a guess. This was tested and worked for me on d6:

<?php
function phptemplate_textarea($element) {
  if ($element['#name'] =='body'){ 
      $element['#rows'] = 3;
      $element['#resizable'] = false;
  }
  return theme_textarea($element);
} 
?>

Give it a shot and let me know...

===
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz

bwv’s picture

bwv commented

Wonderful! Thank you, it works perfectly.

(But not when combined with the maxlength module, for some reason. When maxlength is activated, the body field resorts to its original size and becomes resizeable.)

best, david
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://classicvinyl.biz
http://music.classicvinyl.biz
http://association.drupal.org/user/1207

kweq’s picture

kweq commented

I had similar problem, related with number of cols per textarea.
With help of your post it works for me now!
many thanks, Andrew

sylvie_n’s picture

sylvie_n commented

Many thanks for this. I'd been puzzling over making modules and analyzing arrays in order to change the width of my description field...this has worked straight away!

Yuki’s picture

Yuki commented

subscribing

mgenovese’s picture

mgenovese commented

For example, create a dummy module (e.g. customsite, in this case) and use code like this to limit the height (# of rows) of the body:

// Remove some extraneous stuff in the comment form
function customsite_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  //print "<pre>";
  //print "Form ID = ".$form_id."\n";  // Use this code to get the right form ID for the node type of interest.
  //print_r ($form);
  //print "</pre>";

  // Limit body height on article create/edit forms. 
  if ($form_id == 'article_node_form') {  // Change the form ID as you need.
      $form['body_field']['body']['#rows'] = 4;  // Height of the body.
  }
}

Hope this helps.

afagioli’s picture

afagioli
Location Rome
commented

thanks for sharing this. it works

JennySmith’s picture

JennySmith commented

Thanks for sharing this, all. I think using CSS to control the size of these fields is kind of a hack because that doesn't change the actual value for "rows" in the html. The template.php method seems more correct to me somehow. Thanks for helping us newbies.

I wanted to change just the size of just the add comment field. Here's the code for that:

function phptemplate_textarea($element) {
  if ($element['#name'] =='comment'){
      $element['#rows'] = 5;
  }
  return theme_textarea($element);
}

Remember that you may need to refresh the cache at http://www.your-site-name.com/admin/settings/performance for these changes to take effect.

--
http://www.mormonshare.com/ - LDS Clipart, Object Lessons, & Activity Ideas for LDS Primary, Relief Society, and Young Women leaders

ajakoan’s picture

ajakoan commented

http://drupal.org/project/nodeformsettings