Guide to Creating Forms in Baserow

In this article, we’ll cover the process of creating and managing a form view. Visit this support section to learn more about views in general.

Form view provides an easy solution for collecting information. Baserow forms are automatically built from your current table and provide you with the flexibility to customise fields, without creating a form from scratch.

When your recipients submit your forms, you can add fields and rules to automatically produce new rows. You can create a form view on any table on Baserow.

You may customise a form view by clicking the ellipsis next to it and making changes. To choose an action, click the ellipsis ••• at the top of any column:

• Webhooks
• Rename view
• Delete view

How to create a new form

To add a new form view:

1. Click the existing view at the top of the table.
2. Select ‘Form +’ from the popup
3. Name the view.
4. Click ‘Add form’ to quickly create a form.

All of your fields are automatically populated based on each field listed in your grid view.

Using the view switcher at the top-left of the table, you can easily switch between views you’ve created.

To delete a form view, click the view menu button (…) and then select ‘Delete view’ at the bottom of the dropdown menu that appears.

Form survey mode

We are constantly improving our builder. With the Form view, you have the option to choose between the Form or Survey modes.

• Form mode - All fields are visible and vertically stacked. With the Form mode, you can preview all questions at once.
• Survey mode - One field is visible at a time. With this mode, you can preview one question at a time. Navigate between questions in the editor mode by using the arrows at the bottom-right of the screen.

The Survey mode is restricted to the premium version only. If your account is not on our premium plan, you will not have access to the feature unless your plan is upgraded.

To select a mode for your view, click on ‘Mode’ at the top of the screen and choose between the Form or Survey modes:

You can switch between the form or survey modes and work with the mode that produces the best results for you. You also can also preview how your completed form will look while you work on it.

Tip 💡Using the survey mode to display one question at a time on the form may result in higher levels of engagement and completion than using a traditional form.

Customize form display

After you’ve added your form view, you can organise the information you want to display in a variety of ways. You can alter how a field appears to the end user and also choose which fields will appear on your form and in what order.

To change the Submit button text, click on the pencil icon next to the ‘Submit’ button and add the text of your choice.

How to add fields

Formula, created on, last modified, and lookup fields are incompatible with form view.

Adding a new field to your form is simple. All you have to do is select the required fields on the left sidebar to begin collecting information.

To add a new field, you can either select individual fields or click the ‘add all’ button.

You can add a newly created field that doesn’t currently exist in your table by clicking the ‘+ Create new field’ button that appears in the Fields sidebar.

How to remove fields

To remove a field from the form, select the field to display the options the click on the ‘eye’ icon.

Control field options

Click on the header section to add a title and description to your form.

For all the fields, you can also change the name as it will appear on the form and subtitle to something more descriptive of what the field is for and the information that it holds.

You can also make this field required by using the ‘Required?’ toggle.

Adding custom branding with a cover image and logo

After customising your form’s fields, you can further customise the look of your form. To add a logo, click on the ‘Add a logo’ option and upload the desired image.

To upload a cover image, click the grey area at the top of the form where it says ‘Add a cover image’ and then upload the chosen image.

The same can be followed when you want to remove the image or replace it with a new one. Select the fields and the appropriate images.

How to reorder fields

Once you’ve added your questions, you can reorder them.

When working with the Form mode, you can reorder the questions on your form by clicking on a field and dragging it using its drag handle.

To reorganise the form layout, select the field you want to remove and then use the ⠿ to move the order of the fields.

Reorder the fields in the Survey mode by clicking the ‘Order fields’ link at the bottom of the screen. This will bring up a popup of all the fields in the form. Select the field you want to remove and then use the handle ⠿ to reorder the fields.

### Form conditions

Form conditions allow you to control what happens when specific data is entered in a particular field. Conditional logic can be used to hide and show form fields only if any of the criteria are met. It will show fields in a form based on the provided values for previous fields. Creating conditions for forms works the same as Baserow filters.

Form Post Submission customization

You may customize what happens once a form is submitted.

Show a message

After a form has been submitted, you can customize the message that will be shown in the “Thank You” page by typing it in the ‘Show a message’ box. After users click a form’s ‘Submit button’, they will see a message you have customized.

Redirect to URL

To redirect a respondent to a specified URL after submission, enter the URL to the web page you want to redirect to in the URL field. The web browser will be redirected to the URL you specify, rather than defaulting to the default Thank You page.

Share form

Anyone, including Members, can share a form. To share the link with anyone when you’re done creating your form, click on ‘Share form’ at the top of the screen and proceed to create a private shareable link to the form.

After you create a private shareable link to the form, you will find the link settings in the ‘Share form’ pop-up of your form.

Copy and paste the link to easily share your forms with anyone!

Generate a new share link URL

If you want to restrict existing access to a form, you can refresh the URL. By selecting the refresh button next to the URL, you can generate a new form link. This disables the current form share link.

After refreshing, a new URL will be generated and it will not be possible to access the form via the old URL. Everyone that you have shared the URL with, won’t be able to access the form.

Restrict view access with a password

This keeps the share link active to respondents who have a password. Click the ‘Restrict access with a password’ toggle to switch it on or off. The public link will only be accessible after entering the password. This password will be saved encrypted. A minimum of 8 characters is required.

Disable shared link

You can disable the link to stop accepting new form submissions. To stop sharing the form, click on the Share form button and then the ‘x disable shared link’ to turn off sharing immediately. This disables the form. If you later want to open the form again, simply create a private shareable link.

Embed a form via iframe tag

To embed a form via an iframe. Share a grid view publicly, copy the publicly shared URL and replace “YOUR_URL” in the code snippet below:

<iframe src="YOUR_URL" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>

You can create multiple views with different filters and easily share your data by creating a public link.

Pre-filling a form

Whether you are capturing leads, collecting survey results, or registering people for an event, you can get responses directly into your table by using the form view in Baserow. Forms can be prefilled to help the user fill in the form faster. With the pre-filling feature, you can use pre-fill parameters in the URL of the form to pre-fill specific fields making forms even more powerful.

If you want to prefill a form with data you can do so via query parameters added to the public form url. These query parameters are prefixed with prefill to avoid any collision with potential future query parameters.

To pre-fill a form,

• Copy your form URL.
• Add URL parameters in the format: ?prefill_<field_name>=<value>
• Share the pre-filled link.

The <field_name> and values are placeholders. You will need to match the field names and values to the corresponding data in your specific table.

All fields which are available in the form can be prefilled. Note that the values are case-sensitive.

Spaces

Spaces in the field name are replaced with + to avoid any issues with the query parameter.

  ?prefill_my+field=Mike

Multiple values

If you want to prefill multiple fields you can do so by adding a , between the values.

  ?prefill_multi+select=Mike,John

Special field types

Generally, the prefill value is the same as the value of the field. But there are some exceptions where the value is translated to a different value.

Rating field

A rating field accepts a number to indicate how many stars should be filled.

  ?prefill_rating=3

Link row field

A link row field can accept the value that is shown in the select dropdown.

  ?prefill_link+row=Mike

Single Select / Multiple Select fields

A single select field can accept the value that is shown in the select dropdown. So does the Multiple Select field, but it can also accept multiple values.

  ?prefill_single+select=Mike

Date field

A date field can accept a date in the following formats and will use the date format of the field to parse the date.

// Standards
ISO_8601

// General formats
'YYYY-MM-DD',
'YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm A',
'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm',

// EU
'DD/MM/YYYY', 
'DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm A', 
'DD/MM/YYYY HH:mm'

// US
'MM/DD/YYYY', 
'MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm A', 
'MM/DD/YYYY HH:mm'

If you want to hide a field dynamically, you can do so via query parameters added to the public form URL. These query parameters are prefixed with hide_ to avoid collision with potential future query parameters.

?hide_<field_name> ?hide_Name ?hide_Full+Name

Preview form

Before you can share the link to your form, it is advisable that you preview the form. To preview a form, click on the ‘Preview’ button at the top of the screen to open directly to the page with your form in a new tab.

Alternatively, copy the private link by clicking the document icon and pasting it to your browser.

View form data

Form data that has been filled and submitted will instantly create a new record in your database.

All submissions entered via a form will appear at the bottom of the grid view, so long as their records are not hidden from view or sorted in a way that would limit what information shows up on submission.

If you’re looking for something else, please feel free to make recommendations or ask us questions in our online community —we’re ready to assist you!