Twitter Bootstrap Question posted in

Twitter bootstrap – What is a form control in HTML?

When researching how to write forms in HTML I see mention of the term “form control”.
In particular using Twitter Bootstrap which has classes like form-control and control-label.
What exactly is a “form control”?

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Answers


  1. 0

    For Bootstrap it seems to be a styling thing: From bootstrap’s page:

    Individual form controls automatically receive some global styling. All textual <input>, <textarea>, and <select> elements with .form-control are set to width: 100%; by default. Wrap labels and controls in .form-group for optimum spacing.

    But more broadly it seems to be more, as per @the_velour_fog ‘s comment:

    it seems to be more than just a styling thing: it seems form control just refers to the individual HTML elements in a HTML form e.g. from https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html; A form is a component of a Web page that has form controls, such as text fields, buttons, checkboxes, range controls, or colour pickers.

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  2. 0

    The term has very little to do with styling, though styling forms is a special art.

    ‘Form elements’ are the (usually interactive) controls whose values are submitted automatically with the http request that is initiated by clicking the “submit” button – even without javaScript. Most commonly this would be button, input, textarea and similar element types. MDN has this entry with hyperlinks to documentation of each type.

    Anything where a value attribute is meaningful or expected can be a form element. The name attribute is also important, since this is used (e.g. on the server side) as a ‘key’ for the value in the form data.

    The supporting elements such as label, fieldset and legend are commonly regarded as form elements, since they exist to name and group the other form elements from the user’s point of view, although they contribute nothing to the submitted form data.

    There may be elements in the form which have no ‘value’ attribute (e.g. headings, hyperlinks or images), but strictly speaking, these are not ‘form elements’. They may however contribute to the form data via client-side javaScript.

    And you can use form elements in something which is not a form, or which makes parameterised http requests without an explicit form element. This is very common.

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  3. 0

    A form is a component of a Web page that has form controls, such as text fields, buttons, checkboxes, range controls, or color pickers. A user can interact with such a form, providing data that can then be sent to the server for further processing (e.g., returning the results of a search or calculation). No client-side scripting is needed in many cases, though an API is available so that scripts can augment the user experience or use forms for purposes other than submitting data to a server.

    A form control is a user interface control that serves as the point of connection between the user and the server. Interactions vary by control type: buttons: button file handling: input type="file" menus: select, etc. And are also grouped into categories
    Controls are essentially an API of key-value pairs for pinging back and forth to the server.

    W3C’s Form Section is incredibly informative in its walk through of forms, form elements, form controls, form owners, and more insight to the inner workings of the Internet’s workhorse: the humble HTML form.

    References:
    Forms
    HTMLFormElement
    Association of Controls and Forms
    XForms Glossary
    Form Controls Infrastructure

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