Fields

The standard schema fields

The following tables shows the most common field types for use in Dexterity schemata. See the documentation on creating schemata for information about how to use these.

Field properties

Fields are initialised with properties passed in their constructors. To avoid having to repeat the available properties for each field, we’ll list them once here, grouped into the interfaces that describe them. You’ll see those interfaces again in the tables below that describe the various field types. Refer to the table below to see what properties a particular interface implies.

Interface Property Type Description
IField title unicode The title of the field. Used in the widget.
description unicode A description for the field. Used in the widget.
required bool Whether or not the field is required. Used for form validation. The default is True.
readonly bool Whether or not the field is read-only. Default is False.
default   The default value for the field. Used in forms and sometimes as a fallback value. Must be a valid value for the field if set. The default is None.
missing_value   A value that represents "this field is not set". Used by form validation. Defaults to None. For lists and tuples, it is sometimes useful to set this to an empty list/tuple.
IMinMaxLen min_length int The minimum required length or minimum number of elements. Used for string, sequence, mapping or set fields. Default is 0.
max_length int The maximum allowed length or maximum number of elements. Used for string, sequence, mapping or set fields. Default is None (no check).
IMinMax min   The minimum allowed value. Must be a valid value for the field, e.g. for an Int field this should be an integer. Default is None (no check).
max   The maximum allowed value. Must be a valid value for the field, e.g. for an Int field this should be an integer. Default is None (no check).
ICollection value_type   Another Field instance that describes the allowable values in a list, tuple or other collection. Must be set for any collection field. One common usage is to set this to a Choice, to model a multi-selection field with a vocabulary.
unique bool Whether or not values in the collection must be unique. Usually not set directly – use a Set or Frozenset to guarantee uniqueness in an efficient way.
IDict key_type   Another Field instance that describes the allowable keys in a dictionary. Similar to the value_type of a collection. Must be set.
value_type   Another Field instance that describes the allowable values in a dictionary. Similar to the value_type of a collection. Must be set.
IObject schema Interface An interface that must be provided by any object stored in this field.
IRichText default_mime_type str Default MIME type for the input text of a rich text field. Defaults to text/html.
output_mime_type str Default output MIME type for the transformed value of a rich text field. Defaults to text/x-html-safe. There must be a transformation chain in the portal_transforms tool that can transform from the input value to the output value for the output property of the RichValue object to contain a value.
allowed_mime_types tuple A list of allowed input MIME types. The default is None, in which case the site-wide settings (from the Markup control panel) will be used.

Field types

The following tables describe the most commonly used field types, grouped by the module from which they can be imported.

Fields in zope.schema

Name Type Description Properties
Choice N/A Used to model selection from a vocabulary, which must be supplied. Often used as the value_type of a selection field. The value type is the value of the terms in the vocabulary. See vocabularies.
Bytes str Used for binary data. IField, IMinMaxLen
ASCII str ASCII text (multi-line). IField, IMinMaxLen
BytesLine str A single line of binary data, i.e. a Bytes with newlines disallowed. IField, IMinMaxLen
ASCIILine str A single line of ASCII text. IField, IMinMaxLen
Text unicode Unicode text (multi-line). Often used with a WYSIWYG widget, although the default is a text area. IField, IMinMaxLen
TextLine unicode A single line of Unicode text. IField, IMinMaxLen
Bool bool True or False. IField
Int int, long An integer number. Both ints and longs are allowed. IField, IMinMax
Float float A floating point number. IField, IMinMax
Tuple tuple A tuple (non-mutable). IField, ICollection, IMinMaxLen
List list A list. IField, ICollection, IMinMaxLen
Set set A set. IField, ICollection, IMinMaxLen
Frozenset frozenset A frozenset (non-mutable). IField, ICollection, IMinMaxLen
Password unicode Stores a simple string, but implies a password widget. IField, IMinMaxLen
Dict dict Stores a dictionary. Both key_type and value_type must be set to fields. IField, IMinMaxLen, IDict
Datetime datetime Stores a Python datetime (not a Zope 2 DateTime). IField, IMinMax
Date date Stores a python date. IField, IMinMax
Timedelta timedelta Stores a python timedelta. IField, IMinMax
SourceText unicode A textfield intended to store source text (e.g. HTML or Python code). IField, IMinMaxLen
Object N/A Stores a Python object that conforms to the interface given as the schema. There is no standard widget for this. IField, IObject
URI str A URI (URL) string. IField, MinMaxLen
Id str A unique identifier – either a URI or a dotted name. IField, IMinMaxLen
DottedName str A dotted name string. IField, IMinMaxLen
InterfaceField Interface A Zope interface. IField
Decimal Decimal Stores a Python Decimal. Requires version 3.4 or later of zope.schema. Not available by default in Zope 2.10. IField, IMinMax

Fields in plone.namedfile.field

See plone.namedfile and plone.formwidget.namedfile for more details.

Name Type Description Properties
NamedFile NamedFile A binary uploaded file. Normally used with the widget from plone.formwidget.namedfile. IField
NamedImage NamedImage A binary uploaded image. Normally used with the widget from plone.formwidget.namedfile. IField
NamedBlobFile NamedBlobFile A binary uploaded file stored as a ZODB BLOB. Requires the [blobs] extra to plone.namedfile. Otherwise identical to NamedFile. IField
NamedBlobImage NamedBlobImage A binary uploaded image stored as a ZODB BLOB. Requires the [blobs] extra to plone.namedfile. Otherwise identical to NamedImage. IField

Fields in z3c.relationfield.schema

See z3c.relationfield for more details.

Name Type Description Properties
Relation RelationValue Stores a single RelationValue. IField
RelationList list A List field that defaults to Relation as the value type See List
RelationChoice RelationValue A Choice field intended to store RelationValue’s See Choice

Fields in plone.app.textfield

See plone.app.textfield for more details.

Name Type Description Properties
RichText RichTextValue Stores a RichTextValue, which encapsulates a raw text value, the source MIME type, and a cached copy of the raw text transformed to the default output MIME type. IField, IRichText