Update: Caldera Forms 1.5 will be released on February 21st. You should test the release candidate now.
What’s got 9 new field types, a front-end entry viewer, conditional recipients and more? I’ll give you hint, it’s first beta has been released today 🙂 That’s right it’s Caldera Forms 1.5.
Look at this photo of my dog Josie. When I took it she had her two favorite toys and was about to get fed. I’m equally excited about this new version of Caldera Forms.
That said, it’s not totally ready, that’s why we have released a beta to WordPress.org, so you can test it using a variety of ways. I’ll list them at the end of this article. This is a big release with a lot of new features and several new internal APIs that we need to test to make sure everything is good before the final release. But first, let’s checkout these cool new features!
Some Of The New Features
Here are some of the most visible new features. There are a lot of under the hood improvements. These improvements will improve the stability of Caldera Forms and make it easier to develop and develop for.
Conditional Email Recipients
A much requested feature! You can now use conditional logic to set who receives the email notification. See the documentation for how to use this new processor.
9 New Fields Types
One of the things I spent the most time on was improving and standardizing field rendering. For example, there is now a function for generating inputs, and all inputs have a filter for their HTML attributes. This helped a lot when it came to adding 9 new field types. Here is a quick preview of what they can do. Be sure to test them out and let me know what you think.
- Right Text Editor – A WYSIWYG, HTML field. Perfect for front-end editing when combined with the Caldera Custom fields add-on.
- Summary – A live updating list of all fields and their values. Perfect for a “are you sure?” last page of a multi-page form.
- Better Phone Field – Features country specific formatting and validation.
- URL – Accepts URLs only.
- Number Fields – Accepts numbers only with the ability to specify minimum, maximum and step size.
- Section Break Field – An easy way to add a section break
- Credit Card Number Field – Card-type aware credit card length validation and formatting. Can be linked to secret code and expiration fields.
- Credit Card Secret Code Field – Secret code, can be linked to credit card number field to ensure it is the lenght for card type entered.
- Credit Card Expiration Field – Formatted for month/year entry.
REST API
Caldera Forms uses the WordPress REST API. It was kind of weird that I made a plugin that didn’t use a REST API, right? Currently the Caldera Forms REST API can be used, when authenticated as an admin, to get form configuration details and form entries. There is also an end-point for global settings and one for refreshing validation tokens.
The Caldera Forms REST API is a long-term project. The goal is to allow Caldera Forms submissions to be made and edited via the WordPress REST API and to improve the Caldera Forms admin using REST API endpoints. This will allow several cool Caldera Forms features I’m thinking of, and for developers to have new ways to work with Caldera Forms entry data.
Speaking of which…
New Entry Viewer And Entry Viewer Shortcode
This release introduces a new entry viewer. In the admin you will see the same entry viewer as before, for now. But there is now have a new shortcode and PHP function to display the classic or the new entry viewer in the front-end, or wherever you need it.
The new entry viewer is built using the new Caldera Forms REST API and VueJS. This new entry viewer is still a work in progress and will grow new features in future releases, for example search, filtering and ordering. This release provides a functional, high performance and highly extensible entry viewer.
This is one of the most exciting new features, but the one that, in this beta, is the least complete. Check it out, let me know what you think and see how it shapes up in beta 2.
How To Test It Out
Please keep in mind this is a first beta of a new release. This site, and my personal site are running Caldera Forms 1.4.7. It is strongly recommended that you test on a staging site or in a local environment.
Here are some options to get the new beta on your test site:
- Use WP Rollback to “roll forward” to version 1.5.0-b-1
- Checkout the 1.5.x branch from Github
- Download the 1.5.x latest from Github
- Download the 1.5.0-b-1 ZIP file from WordPress.org