Is there a way to have an "editable-field" in confluence like there is in JIRA?

[Stephen Swavley]

Is there a way to have an "editable-field" in confluence like there is in JIRA?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Generally, Confluence is not intended to be field based.  The page is an editable fields.

There are add-ons which inject forms into Confluence, if you decide you really need them for some reason, but fields are not really what it's for, so it doesn't do them natively.

[Stephen Swavley]

That is more an end user answer, not really a developer answer.

Anyone else have any thoughts?  I tried to find the java and css used in JIRA for the JIRA "editable-field" but haven't been able to find it.

Any other recommendations?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, it is, but the question was very light and looked like an end-user getting started.  There wasn't any developer stuff in it.

Trying to take apart the java and css (and javascript, and velocity/soy, and the backend, and and and) for JIRA isn't really going to help you here - it's running in a very different framework, and what you're trying to do is going to require you to pull in resources that Confluence doesn't really have in the pages.  It's doable, certainly, as you can see from the other add-ons that implement form-like interfaces in Confluence.

But before you go down this road, it's worth getting a proper specification from you.  Is it really just a box which would hold some text?  Do you really want another editor inside the page editor?  Could you describe the end goal in more detail than "editable field"?

[Stephen Swavley]

I am looking for a way enter information in a rich text format.  This would be outside of the page edit functionality.

[Stephen Swavley]

PS: "editable-field" is the class used in JIRA.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Why not just use the comments then?

[Steven F Behnke]

The best way to attack this as a developer would be to decide where you want to store these fields against. You would wind up using Properties, which can be applied to pages, spaces, comments, attachments, etc.

Then, you'd want an interface. This could be a pop-up editor or something with which to edit the 'fields.'

Finally, you'd probably want these visible somewhere. This is where you'd probably want to extend the metadata area for Confluence Pages, but with attachments, space, or comments, that would probably look different.

[Stephen Swavley]

We will probably take the source and twist it to our own needs.  In addition, where we are using this "comments" won't be used.

[Robert Krause]

Yes, that is possible. Be aware, that this probably interferes with the comments box itself, causing it to stop working.

[Stephen Swavley]

Actually, I think I may have found what I want.  I might be able to reuse the Comments box.  I will give that a try.

[Robert Krause]

Can you be more specific what you want and what you want to do with it?