# Building Text Entry Boxes

The CFTEXTINPUT tag is similar to the HTML INPUT=text tag. With CFTEXTINPUT, however, you can also specify font and alignment options, as well as enable input validation methods using either a JavaScript or the VALIDATE attribute in CFTEXTINPUT.

The following example shows a basic CFTEXTINPUT control. This example validates a date entry, which means that a user must enter a valid date in the form mm/dd/yy. For a complete list of validation formats, refer to the CFML Language Reference.

    <BR>Please enter a date:
    <CFFORM NAME="Form1"
        ACTION="cfform_submit.cfm"
        METHOD="Post">

        <CFTEXTINPUT NAME="entertext"
            VALUE="mm/dd/yy"
            MAXLENGTH="10"

            VALIDATE="date"
            FONT="Trebuchet MS">

        <BR>

        <INPUT TYPE="Submit"
                VALUE="Submit">

    </CFFORM>

## CFTEXTINPUT form variable

The value of the form variable passed from a CFTEXTINPUT control to a ColdFusion application page is determined by the entry in the CFTEXTINPUT control. The form variable is passed as:

    textinput_name=textinput_value

In the example just above, the form variable would have been passed as:

    entertext=textinput_value

So in the destination application page, the form variable is referenced as #entertext#