form-studio

What is form-studio?

It is a tool that helps design, create and manage form / survey / questionnaire through simple JSON configurations.

It provides:

• Data structure for form configurations and answers.
• Conditionally disabling/enabling questions based on choices made in another question.
• Answer validation mechanism.
• Instructions for rendering the UI based on current status of the form.

It does not provide:

• Any UI components, define your own UI configurations that suit your project needs and render the UI according to your own design system.
• Validators, define your own validators that suit your project needs.

API Documentation

Demo

Install via NPM

npm install form-studio

Import

import { Form } from 'form-studio';

or

const { Form } = require('form-studio');

Form Configs

Form configs is the definition of the form. It should be persisted somewhere (e.g. database) so that it can be reused later.

There are 3 types of items in a configs: Group, Question and Choice.

Each of them has the following properties:

• id: An unique id to identify the item
• order: Sort order of the item among it's parent
• defaultDisabled: To indicate that the item is disabled by default
• custom: Any values that help you determine on how to render the frontend UI or how to perform validation, it should contain minimal but useful information, e.g. title, placeholder

Group

A group is a logical grouping of a set of questions.

A form needs at least 1 group.

Groups can also have sub-groups.

Question

There are 3 types of questions: any, choice and choices.

A question comes with an answer (could be undefined if it is unanswered) and an error (could be undefined if it is unanswered, unvalidated or passed validation).

any questions accept any value as an answer.

choice questions accept a choice value as an answer.

choices questions accept a list of choice values as an answer.

choice and choices questions need to have 1 or more choices.

You can also define the validators to be used by a question to validate its answer.

Choice

Choices are for choice or choices questions.

A choice comes with a value. Value of the choices will be the answer of the question.

A choice has the ability to disable/enable other groups/questions/choices when it's selected/unselected.

Example

The following example consists of 1 group and 2 questions under it.

The second question is disabled by default. If 'yes' is selected for the first question, the second question will be enabled.

{
  "groups": [
    {
      "questions": [
        {
          "id": "proceed",
          "type": "choice",
          "custom": {
            "title": "Would you like to proceed?"
          },
          "choices": [
            {
              "id": "yes",
              "custom": {
                "title": "Yes"
              }
            },
            {
              "id": "no",
              "custom": {
                "title": "No"
              }
            }
          ],
        },
        {
          "id": "name",
          "defaultDisabled": true,
          "enabledOnSelected": ["yes"],
          "type": "any",
          "custom": {
            "type": "string",
            "title": "What is you name?",
          },
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Validate Configs

You can call validateConfigs method to validate your configs.

Form.validateConfigs(configs);

Validators

form-studio doesn't come with any predefined validator. You need to define your own validators according to your project needs.

A validator is a function that will be called when the answer of a question is updated, it throws error when validation fails.

Each question can be assigned with one or more validators to be used.

Example

const validators = {
  atLeast1: answer => {
    if (answer.length < 1) {
      throw new Error('Please select at least 1 option.');
    }
  },

  notNull: answer => {
    if (!answer) {
      throw new Error('This question cannot be left unanswered.');
    }
  },

  number: (answer, question) => {
    const { min, max } = question.custom;
    if (answer < min){
      throw new Error('Please enter no less than ' + min + '.');
    }
    if (answer > max){
      throw new Error('Please enter no greater than ' + max + '.');
    }
  }
};

Form Update Listener

A listener function that will be called when form is updated.

Form will be updated when answer is set, validation is triggered, etc.

Form updated listener is needed when the form is being used in frontend, so that you can trigger an UI rerender when form is updated.

Example (React)

const [renderInstructions, setRenderInstructions] = useState<RenderInstructions>();

const onFormUpdate = form => setRenderInstructions(form.getRenderInstructions());

Construct a Form

const form = new Form(configs, { validators, onFormUpdate });

Render Instructions

Render instructions can be get by calling getRenderInstructions method.

It is a set of instructions that tell you how the form should look like.

Each item in the instructions comes with the following properties:

• id: An unique id to identify the item
• disabled: Whether or not this item is disabled, you should handle it in the UI, e.g. hide or grey out disabled item
• custom: The exact same values that you specified in the form configs

Questions also come with the following important properties that you will need to determine the UI:

• type:
  • any: render whatever UI that is required based on your custom configs, e.g. if custom.inputType is string, then a simple text input is rendered
  • choice: render UI that allows user to select 1 option from a list of options, e.g. select, radio button group
  • choices: render UI that allows user to select multiple options from a list of options, e.g. check box group
• currentAnswer: current answer of the question, it is unvalidated and might not be valid, but you will still need to show them on UI
• validatedAnswer: validated answer
• validating: whether or not the question is currently being validating, it could happen if the validator used is an aysnc function, you might want to show a spinner or some other indicator on UI
• error: error for question which failed validation

Example (React)

let form: Form;

export const SurveyPage = () => {
  const [renderInstructions, setRenderInstructions] = useState<RenderInstructions>();

  useEffect(() => {
    form = new Form(configs, {
      validators,
      validate: false,
      onFormUpdate: form => setRenderInstructions(form.getRenderInstructions())
    });
  }, []);

  const renderQuestion = (question: QuestionRenderInstructions) => {
    const { disabled, type, custom } = question;
    if (disabled) {
      return null;
    }
    if (type === 'any') {
      return (
        <>
          {custom.inputType === 'string' && renderStringInput(question)}
        </>
      );
    }
    if (type === 'choice') {
      return renderRadioGroup(question);
    }
    if (type === 'choices') {
      return renderCheckBoxGroup(question);
    }
  };

  const renderRadioGroup = (question: QuestionRenderInstructions) => {
    const { id, choices, error, currentAnswer } = question;
    return (
      <RadioGroup
        error={error}
        value={currentAnswer}
        onChange={e => form.setChoice(id, e.target.value)}>
        {choices!.map(choice =>
          <Radio
            value={choice.value}
            disabled={choice.disabled}>
            {choice.custom.title}
          </Radio>
        )}
      </RadioGroup>
    );
  };

  const renderCheckBoxGroup = (question: QuestionRenderInstructions) => {
    const { id, choices, error, currentAnswer } = question;
    return (
      <CheckBoxGroup
        error={error}
        value={currentAnswer}
        onChange={answer => form.setChoices(id, answer as any[])}>
        {choices!.map(choice =>
          <CheckBox
            value={choice.value}
            disabled={choice.disabled}>
            {choice.custom.title}
          </CheckBox>
        )}
      </CheckBoxGroup>
    );
  };

  const renderStringInput = (question: QuestionRenderInstructions) => {
    const { id, custom, currentAnswer, error } = question;
    return (
      <TextInput
        error={error}
        maxLength={custom.maxLength as number}
        value={currentAnswer}
        onChange={e => form.setAny(id, e.target.value)} />
    );
  };

  return renderInstructions?.questions.map(question => renderQuestion(question));
};

Setting Answers

any questions use setAnswer or setAny method to set answer.

choice questions use setAnswer, setChoice or selectChoice method to set answer.

choices questions use setAnswer, setChoices or selectChoice method to set answer.

Example (General)

form.setChoice('proceed', 'yes');
form.setAny('name', 'Jason');

Example (Frontend)

onChange={e => form.setChoice(id, e.target.value)}
onChange={e => form.setAny(id, e.target.value)}

Validate in Frontend

Use validate method to trigger validation for the entire form.

Use isValidating & isClean methods to get the state of form validation. E.g. you can disable a button if isValidating is true or isClean is false.

Example (React)

const save = () => {
  if (form.isValidating() || !form.isClean()) {
    alert('Please try again.')
  }
}

<Button onClick={save}>Save</Button>

Persist the Answers

Use asyncValidate method to get the final validated answers.

You can then store the answers to database or send it to backend via API.

Example (Frontend)

const answers = await form.asyncValidate();

if (!answers) {
  alert('There are some invalid answers.');
  return;
}

await ... // Call API to send the answers to backend

If you are sending the answers from frontend to backend, backend can construct the form using the same configs, import the answers, and call asyncValidate method again to revalidate the answers from frontend before you save them into database.

Example (Backend API)

const answers = req.body;
form.importAnswers(answers);
const valid = await form.asyncValidate();

if (!valid) {
  res.status(400);
  res.json({ error: 'There are some invalid answers.' });
  res.end();
  return;
}

await ... // Save the answers to database

res.status(200);
res.end();

Importing Answers

Use importAnswers method to import answers to the entire form.

Example (Frontend)

const answers = await ... // retrieve from API
form.importAnswers(answers);

Example (Backend)

const answers = await ... // retrieve from database
form.importAnswers(answers);

Other Features

Use the following methods to clear current answers:

• clear
• clearGroup
• clearAnswer

Use the following methods to reset answers to their default answers:

• reset
• resetGroup
• resetAnswer