Text

Owned by Elaine Foley
Oct 16, 2023
5 min read

 

Text Overview

Icon

Text 

Video on how a text field without translations behaves

Text Area

Text with Translations

Text with Markdown

Text fields in Picturepark have an additional option to render Markdown. Using Markdown in text fields allows for basic formattings like the use of headlines, bold, italic for descriptions, press kit content, or product details, to highlight specific areas or structure longer texts. Picturepark shows an editor with a side-by-side view for formatted and unformatted text.

Picturepark uses the following component for rendering: https://markdown-it.github.io which offers an online demo. Please ensure that all plugins (checkboxes at the top) are disabled in this demo, as Picturepark does not support any plugins for now. Some basic examples of Markdown syntax are:

Considerations

Text fields allow limited control for user input. Whenever you work with text fields you may have typos or dummy text. The only control present for text fields is the definition of a regular expression for text input. 

Text input is always unstructured content. 

Filter and Analyzer

You can add a filter for text to the Content Browser. Be aware that you might end up with a lot of filter values as text entries can differ a lot, also they may speak about the same topic. Consider to Tagbox fields to avoid three different filters for the same topic:  

  • Title: New Office Location in Aarau

  • Title: Aarau New Offices

  • Title: The new location of the Aarau Office

Text input is analyzed in Picturepark. Analyzers are explained in the Search Analyzer Section. Analyzed means Picturepark extracts individual relevant terms, whereas relevant depends on the Analyzer. 

  • Text without translations is analyzed with a simple analyzer. 

  • Text with translations is analyzed with the language analyzer. 

  • Further analyzers can be configured. 

Usage as sort fields

You can use translated text as a sort field for a Channel. You can configure a) the field itself or b) the specific language of the field.

a) For the field itself, changing the UI language will trigger the sorting to work against the corresponding translation value.

b) For the specific language, the sorting will also happen only on the configured language. This enables you to sort on metadata languages other than English and German if the values are translated. 

Examples

Use the Text field for:

  • Product Codes

  • Titles

  • Descriptions

  • URL

Text Value Handling

Picturepark Setup Example

Layer: Corporate Information (ID: CorporateInformation)

Field1: Title (ID: title, translated text)
Field2: Note (ID: note, text without translations)

Fieldpath

Path: corporateInformation.title.en
Path: corporateInformation.note

Advanced search for field

 

Use in Display Pattern

Returned field value

The Liquid filter | translate returns the value that matches the default language. 

To get specific language values you must provide the correct language abbreviation: .de / .en

Text Field Settings

Name

Add the name in singular or plural depending on the use case. 

Avoid adding the required language in the label (Title English, Titel Deutsch) as Picturepark shows the language in front of the field. 

ID

Multiline

It defines that the field value must be displayed in a multiline component.
This setting has no effect on the possible input but on the user experience as the multiline display is easier to read for longer text.

Rendering

The option to render the text values as Markdown, including side-by-side Markdown editor. Picturepark offers:

  • Default rendering: The text input is just text without any formatting.

  • Markdown rendering: The text input is in Markdown syntax and bold, italic and links are rendered correctly.

Markdown will only be rendered in the Content Item Detail View, not in Display Pattern or list views.

Translations

If a field is a translated string or not can not be changed anymore once created. Make sure you use translated strings where needed (or might be needed). Keep in mind that translated fields are "expensive" for indexing

Required

Sortable

Minimum characters

The minimum amount of characters a user must provide. This may be useful to avoid entries like "tbc" or "temp". 

Maximum characters

The maximum amount of characters a user can provide. This is useful to avoid breaking layouts due to very long text. This is also useful for text entries that will be used for Social Media which only allow a certain amount of characters e.g. Twitter only allows 280.

Regular expression

Only for input validation means you can force the user to insert a valid email address, but you cannot append something after input - this can be achieved with a calculated value.

A JSON Schema regex can be used. See here for valid examples: https://spacetelescope.github.io/understanding-json-schema/reference/regular_expressions.html

North American telephone number with optional area code - 555-1212 is valid but (800) Flowers is invalid:

(\\([0-9]{3}))?[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}$

Calculated value

You will not be able to enter text in this field if switched on. The value pattern will be displayed in view mode.

Due to the performance for creating content or list items that have relationship fields, a limitation on the calculated values is present. A calculated value won't be able to access the data of the linked (and resolved) list items. It will only be able to access base content information and the other metadata information (other fields, fieldsets, and relationship values). If the values of linked list items are used, their value is simply not resolved, but the rest of the specified template is rendered. No error message appears if a calculated value cannot be resolved that part of the calculated value just doesn't display.

Once the calculated value setting is switched on you cannot just switch it off to remove the calculated values.

  • You can update the calculated values.

  • You can remove the calculated values by batch editing all affected items (List, Content) and remove the value or you can remove the field.

Value pattern

Monaco Editor which allows defining the calculated value pattern in Liquid Syntax.

  • Page:
    Display Pattern: SEO Friendly Title (Solutions) — A slug is an SEO friendly title you use for images, videos, or complete press kits when sharing them on social media. Picturepark can create the slug for you using any value from any field, replacing spaces with dashes, and even pretending the correct domain. 
    {{data.corporateLayer.title.en | replace: " ", "-" | prepend: "picturepark.com/" }}
{{data.corporateLayer.title.en | replace: " ", "-" | prepend: data.corporateLayer.domain }}
  • Page:
    Display Pattern: File Metadata in Layer Fields (Solutions) — You may want to show the file extension or original filename (standard file metadata) in calculated text fields in a layer. You can make those available to the search and have some basic information shown. 
    {{outerData.data.imageMetadata.fileExtension | replace: ".", " " | upcase}}
{{outerData.data.documentMetadata.documentTitle}}
{{outerData.data.imageMetadata.fileName}}

Include in filters

Include in search

Boost value

Filter analyzer

Search Analyzers used for creating values from the input for Filters in the sidebar. Check Analzyers for details. 

Simple search analyzer

Search Analyzers used for creating values from the input for the Simple Search. Check Analyzers for details.