Form State

Audience: Low-code Engineers

Skill Prerequisites: Actions, Forms, Tokens

The Form State actions save a form's data under a key and load it again later, in the same form or in another one. They let a user come back to a form, or carry values from one form to the next. The saved copy is kept in the user's server session, or a browser cookie points to a saved form report entry.

These actions are only available in Forms.

caution

All the Form State actions are obsolete. Existing forms keep working, but don't use them in new forms. As a suggestion, save the data to your own database table with Run SQL Query, and load it again when the form loads.

Choosing an action

Action	What it does	Use it to
Save State (Obsolete)	Saves the form's current data under a key, in the server session or as a cookie that points to a report entry.	Maintain existing forms that pre-fill one form from another.
Load State (Obsolete)	Loads state saved under a key back into the form, by field name.	Maintain existing forms that restore what a user entered earlier.
Clear State (Obsolete)	Removes the state saved under a key, from the session, the cookie or both.	Maintain existing forms that remove a draft after it's submitted.
Auto Save State (Obsolete)	Asks the form to send its values to the server while the user types, and keeps a cookie named after the key.	Nothing. In version 1.28 nothing is saved, so Load State (Obsolete) has nothing to load.

How form state works

• The key. All four actions use the same key. If a user is logged in, - and their user ID are added to it, so state saved while anonymous isn't found after the user logs in. Forms that use the same key share and overwrite the same state.
• Server Session. A copy of the form's data is kept on the server. It belongs to the user's browser session and is lost when the session ends.
• Browser Cookies. The cookie only holds the form's report entry key. The values come back only if the report entry was saved, for example with Save Report in the Database (Obsolete). Form reports are obsolete since version 1.27.
• Where to use them. Save State saves the data as it is when the action runs, so put it in a button's actions. Load State fills the fields when it runs in the form's On Init actions. In a button's actions, add Update Form Data (AJAX) afterwards to show the values. None of the four actions stops execution.

For the full explanation, see How form state works.

For saving data to your own tables, see Data.

Revised 10/02/2026