I'm wondering if there is any way to reference variables initialized in a script called on form display from within components. For instance, if I create a variable "$formatname" in a form display script, is there any way to retrieve that in a //<code> block in the default value for a field.

The reason I'm asking is I do a good deal of populating fields from community builder. I can populate these fields by scripting in the default value area, but that is wasteful as I need to repetitively execute a bunch of code for each field. It would be far more efficient to call the code once on form display, initialize all the variables I need, and then just grab those as the default values in the form.

I've tried various usages of the "global" declaration, but I haven't been able to find a way to reference variables from the on-display script. Calling all the code to get community builder fields once or twice within a form isn't so bad, but calling it 25 or more times is excessive.

Thanks!

Well ... I figured out that I can use str_replace to replace the value= tag in the HTML by setting something identifiable (ex: %firstname%) to replace.

A more elegant solution would be nice, however. I'm hoping I'm just overlooking something.