deku-forms

A collection of deku components for working with forms. While I consider much of the API stable, it could change after real-world usage. Generally-speaking, I forsee more additions than changes.

NOTE: As of 1.x, I have switched this module over to using mako for builds instead of component and duo. The 0.x releases are still compatible with duo/component as they were before.

Usage

import { Form, InputField } from 'deku-forms';

export function render() {
  return (
    <Form onSubmit={handle}>
      <InputField name="username"
        label="Username"
        required />

      <InputField name="password"
        type="password"
        label="Password"
        minlength="8"
        required />

      <button type="submit">Submit</button>
    </Form>
  );

  function handle(data, form) {
    // data: serialized form data
    // form: raw form element
    console.log(data);
  }
}

Components

Core

• Form
• FormField
• Select

Field Types

• CheckboxField
• InputField
• TextField
• SelectField

Validation

This component leverages HTML5 Constraint Validation heavily. This is a much simpler model than re-implementing this validation in some sort of library, while also allowing a great deal of customized validation.

I recommend reading through this documentation, it will be a great primer on the fundamentals of this validation system.

User Interface

Validation errors are generally only presented to the user after their first submission attempt. Internally, this means the invalid event has been triggered. There are 2 primary ways to force validation on every input/change event, regardless of submission status:

• add the validate attribute (preferred)
• when doing custom validation, call el.checkValidity() manually

NOTE: these methods only apply to the InputField and TextField components as of now. (since the other components don't make much sense with auto-validation)

Custom Validation Messages

All of the *Field components here have a validationMessage(validity, el) prop. You can set a function here to customize the error message you display to your user. The validity argument is a ValidityState object, while the el argument is the corresponding control element. The default for this function is:

function validationMessage(validity, el) {
  return el.validationMessage;
}

This doesn't account for validity at all, as the el.validationMessage is populated by the browser with a message that is generally useful.

Custom Validation Rules

To do custom validation, you will hook into normal events like input and change, from there you call el.setCustomValidity(message) to mark a field as invalid with the corresponding message. (simply call that same method with an empty string to mark it as valid again)

Async Validation

To accomplish async validation, you can use the error attribute that is available on most of the field types. Hook into the change or input events and then you can use state within your form to transfer this error into your field.

This approach isn't perfect, but it's pretty good and doesn't require you to know anything about the HTML5 Constraint Validation API. (unlike previously)