Formally - React forms made easy

Formally brings validation and automated binding to React forms without hassle. Simply instantiate a Form component, toss in a few Input, Select or Buttons as children, and you're good to go!

Getting started

You can install formally simply by running

npm install @formally/react

Formally is built on MobX, so you need to install it as well. If you are not using MobX already, run the following command:

npm install mobx mobx-react

Note: You don't have to use MobX as your state management in order to use Formally, but you have to install it nonetheless as it is defined as a peer dependency.

From there, you can start creating your first form.

1. The Form Component

The entry point for creating a formally form is the Form component. The Form components does two things:

• It creates a new form handler instance for formally's internal computations
• It renders a form node wrapped in a Provider so that all Input children can have access to the form handler (formally uses MobX under the hood, but you can use it without)

It takes the following props. All props are optional.

• onUpdate : called every time a field is updated, with two arguments: values (the current form object) and handler (reference to the handler instance).
• onSubmit : called whenever a submit button is clicked, or any other action that would trigger the onSubmit event of the rendered form node. It receives three arguments: event (the original event), values (the current form object), and handler (reference to the handler instance).
• handler : passed during componentDidMount to the underlying handler instance. Takes two attributes, values for passing default values, and definition, which can be used to alter format and provide validation.

Any other props will be forwarded to the form node.

2. The Input, Select and Textarea Components

All those components must be children of a Form Component, otherwise they cannot work. They work just as their HTML twins, but do not need value or onChange props. Instead, they take a path prop that automatically binds their value to the corresponding property in the form instance.

Here are the accepted props. path is mandatory, others are optional.

• path : object path of the property to bind the value to. It can be a nested path, using the dot notation "my.nested.property".
• tag : React Component to draw instead of the default HTML node. This component must accept the value/onChange pair of props.
• onChange : a custom onChange can be passed, it will be called whenever the value changes, for convenience. Most of the time it will not by needed.

All other props are forwarded to the underlying HTML node, except for:

• value : value is overridden with the internal value for the field.

3. Putting it all together

Here is a very basic working sample:

import React from 'react'
import { Form, Input } from '@formally/react'
import { login } from './my-login-service'

class MyLoginForm extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <Form
        onSubmit={(e, values) => {
          e.preventDefault()
          login(values) // values will be an object of shape { email: "", password: "" }
        }}
      >
        <Input path="email" placeholder="Email address" />
        <Input path="password" type="password" />
        
        <button type="submit">Login</button>
      </Form>
    )
  }
}

Adding validation

formally provides a built-in validation handling. It follows the classic form validation system, and exposes for each field a usage state (pristine/dirty and touched/untouched) and provides a way to implement custom validation rules passed to the form instance.

1. Passing custom validation rules

In order to add custom validation rules, you need to pass a definition object through the handler prop of the Form element.

This definition object must follow the shape of your form instance, but does not need to implement all the fields.

Each field is defined by an object containing two optional properties: format, which is a function allowing you to visually modify the value before printing, and validation, an object used as a map of validation rule -> validation function. You can also use the special required: true rule which checks for input. For instance, the following would make sure that all passwords are at least 4 characters long, and are required:

definition={{
 "password": {
   validation: {
     required: true,
     invalid: (v) => !v || v.length < 4  // A password is invalid if not provided, or less than 4 characters long
   }
 } 
}}

2. Validation messages

Once the validation rules are in place, formally provides an easy way to display a warning to the user: the Message component. The Message components take a path and a rule, and only displays its children if the given rule is true for the path.

Here are the props for the Message Component.

• path : field to validate
• rule : custom rule to check
• display : state of the field needed for display. Can be always, touched and dirty. Defaults to touched.
• blurred : if true, only display the message when the field is blurred.

Example:

<Message path="password" rule="required">Password required</Message>
<Message path="password" rule="invalid" display="dirty" blurred>Invalid password: must be at least 4 characters</Message>

3. Multiple rules, single message

Sometimes multiple rules can be broken at the same time. In our example, the required and invalid rules can both be triggered if no password is provided.

If we were to create a Message Component for both rules, both messages would be displayed to the user, which can be confusing.

formally provides a SwitchMessages Component that can be used to wrap multiple messages, and will only ever display one at a time: the first Message with a triggered rule.

<SwitchMessages>
    <Message path="password" rule="required">Password required</Message>
    <Message path="password" rule="invalid" display="dirty" blurred>Invalid password: must be at least 4 characters</Message>
</SwitchMessages>

Styling

W.I.P.

Using custom input components

W.I.P.

Using the "core" Handler

W.I.P.