Plain Text Fields

Plain text fields give you either a normal text input or a multi-line textarea, where plain text can be entered. How that text is used is entirely up to you!

# Settings

Plain text fields have the following settings:

UI Mode — How the field should be presented in the control panel. (Defaults to “Normal”, can be “Enlarged”.)
Placeholder Text — The field’s placeholder text, to be displayed if the field has no value yet.
Field Limit — The maximum number of characters or bytes the field is allowed to have. (Accepts a number and a unit, which defaults to “Characters” with another option for “Bytes”.)
Use a monospaced font — Whether field input’s text will use a monospaced font.
Allow line breaks — Whether to allow line breaks in this field.
- Initial Rows — For multi-line inputs, choose how many lines of text fit in the field, initially. This setting does not affect how many lines of text can be stored.

# The Field

Plain text fields will either show a normal text input element or a multi-line textarea, depending on whether Allow line breaks was checked. To give editors more space, increase the number of Initial Rows.

# Development

Accessing a plain text field in your templates will return the value that was entered in the field. Suppose our field was named “Summary” and had a handle of summary:

{{ entry.summary }}

# Testing for a Value

An empty text field is a “falsey” value, so you can use it in a conditional:

{% if entry.summary %}
  <h3>Summary</h3>
  <p>{{ entry.summary }}</p>
{% endif %}

Keep in mind that whitespace characters count the same as any other character—use the trim filter to remove spaces and newlines from the beginning and end:

{% if entry.summary|trim %}
  {# Ok, there really is content in here! #}
  <h3>Summary</h3>
  <p>{{ entry.summary }}</p>
{% endif %}

# Processing Text

Craft’s Twig environment has a ton of useful text processing features.

# Markdown

Parse a field’s value as Markdown with the markdown or md filter:

{% if entry.summary %}
  <h3>Summary</h3>
  {{ entry.summary|md }}
{% endif %}

Note that we’re not manually wrapping the output in <p></p> tags! Markdown takes care of this for us, unless you pass the inlineOnly argument:

<h3>{{ entry.stylizedHeader|md(inlineOnly = true) }}</h3>

# Reference Tags

To include dynamic information in a Plain Text field, you can copy reference tags from other elements, then use the parseRefs filter to render their values:

Value
Template
Output

I can’t live without {globalset:snippets:primaryProductName}!

# Querying

Plain text field values are stored as strings, and therefore support a variety of convenient query features via craft\helpers\Db::parseParam() (opens new window).

# Exact Matches

Open-ended inputs aren’t ideal for storing enum-style data (leave that to a dropdown field), but you can still query based on the exact text content of a field:

{% set reds = craft.entries()
  .section('swatches')
  .colorGroupCode('RED')
  .all() %}

# Multiple Values

Match against a list using comma-separated values or an array:

{# Separate values with commas... #}
{% set sunrisePalette = craft.entries()
  .section('swatches')
  .colorGroupCode('PINK, RED, YELLOW, ORANGE')
  .all() %}

{# ...or use an array: #}
{% set sunrisePalette = craft.entries()
  .section('swatches')
  .colorGroupCode(['PINK', 'RED', 'YELLOW', 'ORANGE'])
  .all() %}

These examples are ultimately assembled into a NOT IN (...) SQL clause.

# Negation

Exclude elements with a specific field value by preceding a value with not:

{% set notCool = craft.entries()
  .section('swatches')
  .colorGroupCode('not BLUE')
  .all() %}

Multiple values can be excluded by preceding each term in a comma-separated list by a not ('not BLUE, not GREEN'), or by using not as the first item in an array (['not', 'BLUE', 'GREEN']).

The grouping of terms is important when combining ranges and negation! not RED, YELLOW means “Swatches with a color other than RED, or swatches with a color of YELLOW.” On the other hand, ['not', 'RED', 'YELLOW'] means “Swatches with a color other than RED or YELLOW.” The former would exclude “red” swatches, but allow “yellow;” the latter would exclude both colors.

# Partial Matches

You can query using partial matches by including an asterisk (*) at the beginning and/or end of a value:

{# All “pastel” families: #}
{% set pastels = craft.entries()
  .section('swatches')
  .colorGroupCode('PASTEL-*')
  .all() %}

{# All “glossy” group variations: #}
{% set glosses = craft.entries()
  .section('swatches')
  .colorGroupCode('*-GLOSS')
  .all() %}

Combined with the above, a param like 'not *-MATTE' is also valid. Queries that use asterisks are generally compiled into LIKE statements compatible with the database driver.

# Empty Values

The special tokens :empty: and :notempty: can be used to find elements with a plain text field that is empty or populated, respectively. Both tokens are compiled into query conditions that compare against null and empty string ('') values.

# Literal Symbols

To use asterisks or commas in a query param, pass your value through the literal Twig filter.

# Case-Sensitivity

Query values are case-sensitive, by default. To make a query case-insensitive, use a hash with value and caseInsensitive keys:

{% set reds = craft.entries()
  .section('swatches')
  .colorGroupCode({
    value: 'red',
    caseInsensitive: true,
  })
  .all() %}