preact-bind-group

An event wrapper for preact and react to centralize and simplify events management and state binding.

Check (outdated) the demo.

breaking changes since version 2.*

• React is now supported. Just import from "preact-bind-group/react"
• BindGroup component has been renamed to FormGroup

Why

React/Preact forms are a bit cryptic because it leads developer to deal with too many language primitives to tie state with fields, care about events and duplicate this pattern for each field.

How

preact-bind-group exposes a <FormGroup> component that looks for children that contain data-bind attribute which should be assigned to any element or component that emits an onChange event.

Get started

Install it:

npm install preact-bind-group

Import it it in your components and use it:

import { render } from "preact";
import { FormGroup } from "preact-bind-group";

const App = () => (
  <div>
    <h3>FormGroup demo</h3>
    <FormGroup watch={change => console.log(change)}>
      <label>
        Name: <input data-bind="name" />
      </label>
      <br />
      <label>
        Age: <input data-bind="age" />
      </label>
    </FormGroup>
  </div>
);

Watch callback

The watch callback receives an {key: value} object containing the changed property as its parameter.

 {name: "asdas"}

Then you can update your state easily:

  <FormGroup watch={change => this.setState({ ...change })}>

If the input element is of type checkbox or radio, then it'll receive the checked html property as its value.

For convenience, you'll get a second argument with the field key. The callback signature is ({ [key: string]: any }, key: string) => void.

Custom events

You can change the event that FormGroup should listen to:

  <input data-bind="name" data-event="onInput"/>

Note: keep in mind that onInput in Preact === onChange in React, and onChange in Preact === onBlur on React.

Preload form with data

You should use preload attr to fill form fields with default data

<div>
  <h3>FormGroup demo</h3>
  <FormGroup watch={change => console.log(change)} preload={userModel}>
    <div>
      <input data-bind="name"/>
    </div>
    <div>
      <input data-bind="likesPizza" type="checkbox"/>
    </div>
    <div>
      <input data-bind="belovedFood" type="radio" value="potato"/>
      <input data-bind="belovedFood" type="radio" value="banana"/>
      <input data-bind="belovedFood" type="radio" value="peanuts"/>
    </div>
    <div>
      <textarea data-bind="comments"/>
    </div>
  </FormGroup>
</div>