react-form-composer

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Introduction

React-form-composer provides validation and state management for react, react-native and isomorphic forms. It has a download size of less than 7kB, is written with hooks and is optimized for fast rendering.

The small but powerful api is simular to ones provided by Informed or Redux-Form and it makes it suitable for anything from simple input forms through to large multi-row CRUD applications.

From Version 2.5 a set of ui-components is included. Version 3.0 has been simplified - now it is easier to get started.

Getting Started

Install with npm or yarn

npm install --save react-form-composer or yarn add react-form-composer

Create a Simple Form

import React from 'react';
import {
  Form,
  FormSpy,
  useForm,
  Text,
  TextArea,
  RadioGroup,
  Radio,
  Checkbox,
  Select,
  ValidationMessage
} from 'react-form-composer';
 
const TheFormState = () => {
  const {state} = useForm();
  return (
    <pre>
      <code>{JSON.stringify(state.fieldValues, null, 2)}</code>
    </pre>
  );
};
 
const isValidSelector = state => state.formStatus.isValid;
const Button = (props) => (
  <FormSpy selector={isValidSelector}>
    {(isValid) => (
      <button {...props} style={{backgroundColor: isValid? 'green': 'cyan'}} >Submit</button>
    )}
  </FormSpy>
);
 
const lengthAtLeast5 = value => {
  return !value || value.length < 5 ? 'Field must be at least five characters' : undefined;
}
 
const flexColumn = {
  display: 'flex',
  flexDirection: 'column',
  marginTop: '10px',
  maxWidth: '200px'
}
 
const MyForm = () => {
  return (
    <Form onSubmit={submitValues} onSubmitSuccess={clearValues}>
      <label>
        Field One (5+ chars):
        <Text name="fieldOne" required validate={lengthAtLeast5}/>
      </label>
      <ValidationMessage name="fieldOne" render={error => <p>{error}</p>}/>
      <label>Text Area: <TextArea name="fieldTwo"/></label>
      <label>Age: <Text name="age" type="number"/></label>
      <RadioGroup name="pet">
        <div><label>Dog: <Radio value="dog" selected/></label></div>
        <div><label>Cat: <Radio value="cat"/></label></div>
      </RadioGroup>
      <label>Authorize? <Checkbox name="authorize"/></label>
      <label>
        Frequency
        <Select name="frequency" required>
          <option value="" disabled>
            Select One...
          </option>
          <option value="daily">Daily</option>
          <option value="weekly">Weekly</option>
          <option value="monthly">Monthly</option>
        </Select>
      </label>
      <label>
        Exercise
        <Select name="exercice" multiple>
          <option value="Walk">walk</option>
          <option value="Run">run</option>
          <option value="Cycle">cycle</option>
          <option value="Swim">swim</option>
        </Select>
      </label>
      <Button/>
      <TheFormState/>
    </Form>
  );
};
 
function submitValues(values) {
  window.alert(`You submitted:${JSON.stringify(values, null, 2)}`)
}
 
function clearValues(form) {
  form.updateFields({});
}
 
export default MyForm;

Going Further

React-form-composer is written for developers. For example, the built-in ui-components (like Text, Checkbox) make no use of any special/private features - they are written using the public api provided by the Field component.

Design choices like this is what makes react-form-composer none-perscriptive - you can easily write your own ui-components or add features in many other ways.

To see this in practise take a look the CRUD example:

Create a CRUD/REST-api form (See live example)

import React from 'react';
import RestApiCrudForm from '../../data-components/rest-api-crud-form';
import {TextInput, NumberInput, Checkbox} from '../../ui-components';
 
const USER_ID=3;
const Todo = ({disabled=false, index}) => {
  return (
    <>
      <NumberInput
        defaultValue={USER_ID}
        disabled={true}
        name="userId"
        id={`userId${index}`}
        required
        label="userId"
      />
      <NumberInput
        disabled={true}
        name="id"
        id={`id${index}`}
        label="id"
      />
      <TextInput
        disabled={disabled}
        name="title"
        id={`title${index}`}
        required
        label="Title"
      />
      <Checkbox
        disabled={disabled}
        name="completed"
        id={`completed${index}`}
        label="Completed"
      />
    </>
  );
}
 
const TODOS_URL = 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos';
const MyForm = () => (
  <RestApiCrudForm
    name="todoList"
    resourceUrl={TODOS_URL}
    urlForRead={`${TODOS_URL}?userId=${USER_ID}`}
    inputComponent={Todo}
  />
);
 
export default MyForm;
 

Features

• Easy to write mult-row CRUD Forms connected to a rest api (See live example)
• Optimized for efficient rendering (See live example)
• Small bundle size (see bundlephobia)
• React-native support
• Perfect for server-rendering
• Stores values as semantic types, eg number fields will store numbers
• Format values, eg to put commas in numbers
• Field-arrays for repeated rows with add/remove
• Keeps a running error-count and valid/not valid status
• Synchronous and asynchronous validation
• Easy inter-field valiation (See live example)

Contributing

I'm keen to get feedback and to work collaboratively. Please let me know about any issues/ideas here.

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