Breaking: #107677 - Drop prepend and append modes from TCA Value Picker
See forge#107677
Description
The prepend and append modes of the Value Picker specified in TCA and
used in FormEngine
(
$GLOBALS)
have been removed.
These modes were designed to insert predefined values before or after the existing input value, but they served only very niche use cases and caused inconsistent behavior across different input types.
Maintaining these modes introduced unnecessary complexity, both in terms of implementation and accessibility. Prepending or appending content dynamically to user input fields can easily lead to unexpected results, break input validation, and interfere with assistive technologies such as screen readers. Moreover, this approach mixes presentation and data logic in ways that are not consistent with modern form handling patterns.
Future improvements to the Value Picker will focus on a consistent mode=replace behavior and will be implemented as new form of input types to provide a more robust and accessible user experience.
Impact
Any Value Picker TCA configuration using the mode options prepend or append
will no longer have an effect. TYPO3 will ignore these settings, and the picker
will default to the regular replace behavior.
Affected installations
Installations using custom FieldWizard configurations or integrations that rely
on the Value Picker with mode = prepend or mode = append are affected.
Migration
There is no direct replacement for the removed modes.
If your implementation depends on prepending or appending content to existing values, you should implement a custom input type or custom form element to handle this behavior explicitly. This allows you to maintain full control over the user interface, data handling, and accessibility.
For most use cases, it is recommended to replace prepend/append logic with standard replace Value Picker behavior or dedicated UI controls that clearly indicate how values are modified.
If the use case of such a Value Picker was to provide a list of possible elements that could be combined, consider listing these elements in the description of the input element, so that users can copy+paste these into the input box on their own.