Form Library Search
The forms library home page has a search bar in the top right corner which lets you carry out a quick search of all form content. You can enter a word or ID and press the enter key or click the search icon.
If you know the ID of the form you are looking for, clicking the "ID only" checkbox will only search for form IDs. Note that both the iCM ID and Live Form ID are included in this search.
Alternatively, the form action panel has a link to "Search forms" which pretty much takes you to the same place (it's the results page, but has zero results because you haven't search for anything yet).
Once you've carried out a search you'll see a list of the forms, blueprints and snippets whose ID and/or text match your search. The search in iCM will look at the form's title, description and all of the content within the form, including all of the field and page properties, JavaScript and other embedded code.
The search results page also contains a list of filters.
By default, all form types will be returned in the search. You can use the filter to tell the search to only return forms of the type you choose.
For more information about searching and replacing in iCM, including search operators, using brackets and quotes, and case sensitivity, see Search and Replace in iCM.
Searching for Field Types
You can also use the search to find forms that use a particular field type. Searching for the field type name (as it appears in the form family) returns forms using it. Common fields include actionemail and actiondatabase.
Working with the Results
Right-click on a form in the search results to see the list of actions you can carry out. The menu includes the same actions as when you right-click on a form in the explorer menu.
The action menu of the results page includes two options, "Publish listed forms" and "Publish listed forms for production". These actions will publish all of the forms listed in the results. There may be other forms that match the search criteria, but won't be published, because only fifty results can be displayed at once.
Forms Designer Search
When you are working in the Forms Designer, the action panel on the design tab includes three search options.
Search
The search action will open a pop-up window that lets you enter your search term. By default, the search will be case insensitive and it will return partial word matches. There are four options you can use with your search, which can be used in combination with each other.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Match case | Makes the search case sensitive |
| Match whole word | Will only match whole words |
| Use regular expressions | If checked you can enter a regular expression into the search field instead of text. If unchecked the expression will be escaped and treated as literal characters |
| JavaScript, HTML, Handlebars only | Check this box to only search for code used in the form (ie the handlers, field functions and page/form functions). Note that it is the code generated by the visual script editor blocks that gets indexed and searched |
Here are some of the more common regular expression constructs that may be used when "Use regular expressions" is checked.
| Expression | Description | Expression | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| [abx-z] | One character of: a, b, or the range x-z | ^ | Beginning of the string |
| [^abx-z] | One character except: a, b, or the range x-z | $ | End of the string |
| a|b | a or b | \n | A newline |
| a? | Zero or one a's (greedy) | \t | A tab |
| a?? | Zero or one a's (lazy) | \d | A digit (same as [0-9]) |
| a* | Zero or more a's (greedy) | \D | A non-digit (same as [^0-9]) |
| a*? | Zero or more a's (lazy) | \w | A word character (same as [_a-zA-Z0-9]) |
| a+ | One or more a's (greedy) | \W | A non-word character (same as [^_a-zA-Z0-9]) |
| a+? | One or more a's (lazy) | \s | A whitespace character |
| a{4} | Exactly 4 a's | \S | A non-whitespace character |
| a{4,8} | Between (inclusive) 4 and 8 a's | \b | A word boundary |
| a{9,} | 9 or more a's | \B | A non-word boundary |
Search for Unnamed Fields
When fields are first added to a form they are named "FIELDXX" (where XX is a unique number). We strongly advise giving all fields a meaningful name.
The "Search for unnamed fields" action will return all of the fields on the current form that have this format.
Search for all JavaScript, HTML, Handlebars Code
This action will load all of the fields that contain any of the above code types into the search results.
Searching for a Field Name
If you right-click on a field, you can perform a search based upon it's name. This will load all the the field types that contain the name of this field. This is very useful if you need to quickly see if a field is referenced in the JavaScript of another field.
A name search is performed automatically if you change the name of a field or a page. This will highlight any references to the old name and allow you to update them.
Be aware that if the form is using an external type, field names may include the '.' character, which will be seen as a word boundary when a whole word match has been requested.
Search Results
Whichever type of search you perform, results are loaded at the bottom of the Forms Designer into two panels.
The left hand panel lists all of the fields that match your search. Double-clicking on a field will open the relevant field and property in the Forms Designer.
The right hand panel provides a preview showing where the search term is being used.
You can perform the same search again by clicking the refresh button in the top right of the results panel.
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