Message style attributes

Message presentation style attributes apply to an ERROR or MESSAGE instruction.

The Message presentation style element type can be used to set style attributes for both ERROR and MESSAGE instructions.

To distinguish ERROR from MESSAGE, use the ":error" or ":message" pseudo-selectors:
  • "Message:error" corresponds to the ERROR instruction
  • "Message:message" corresponds to the MESSAGE instruction.

The ERROR and MESSAGE instructions can use a STYLE attribute in the ATTRIBUTES clause:

MESSAGE "No rows have been found." ATTRIBUTES(STYLE="info")

A limited set of common style attributes are supported for error/message display. In addition to the attributes described in the section, you can only define font style attributes for messages.

Like simple form fields, TTY attributes have a higher priority than style attributes. By default, ERROR has the TTY attribute REVERSE, which explains why ERROR messages have a reverse background, even when you use a backgroundColor style attribute. Use the NORMAL attribute in ERROR, to avoid the default REVERSE TTY attribute and define your own background color with a style.

Tip:
Consider centralizing your ERROR and MESSAGE instruction calls in a function, to simplify global modifications:
FUNCTION my_error(m, s)
   DEFINE m, s STRING
   IF s IS NULL THEN
       ERROR m ATTRIBUTES(NORMAL)
   ELSE
       ERROR m ATTRIBUTES(NORMAL, STYLE=s)
   END IF
END FUNCTION

sanitize

By default, to avoid "Stored XSS" attacks, the front-end cleans the HTML sent to form elements to ensure no malicious script can be executed. This security control prevents for example to use HTML content such as "<a href='mailto: …".

The default for the sanitize attribute is "yes".

To disable the checking of HTML content send to form elements, set the sanitize style attribute to "no".

The sanitize style attribute makes only sense for Message form elements, when used with the textFormat style attribute set to "html":

<Style name="Message.relax">
     <StyleAttribute name="textFormat" value="html"/>
     <StyleAttribute name="sanitize" value="no"/>
</Style>

textFormat

Defines the rendering of the content of the widget.

Possible values are:
  • "plain" (default): the value assigned to this widget is interpreted as plain text.
  • "html", it is interpreted as HTML (with hyperlinks).
    Important:

    The HTML content displayed inside a form element using the textFormat=html style must not be a complete HTML document (using CSS styles for example). The content must be simple HTML, with basic tags such as text decoration like <b/> for bold, <ul/>+<li/> for bullet lists, and inline styles.