Forms

Most of web applications has may forms.

Falak JS handles in out of the box way web forms with a simple easy way to use.

Creating new form

Let's create a simple form in our hello-world.component.html file.

hello-world.component.html

<form>
    <button>Login</button>
</form>

A simple normal form so far, now let's add some inputs

hello-world.component.html

<form>
    <input type="email" required class="form-control" placeholder="Email address" />
    <input type="password" required class="form-control" placeholder="Enter your password" /> 
    <button>Login</button>
</form>

So far so good a very normal form with some inputs and a submission button.

hello-world.component.html

<form (submit)="this.performLogin($el)">
    <form-input type="email" required class="form-control" placeholder="Email address"></form-input>
    <form-input type="password" required class="form-control" placeholder="Enter your password"></form-input>
    <button>Login</button>
</form>

All what we've done here is we changed the normal input tag to form-input component, which is part of this flk-form.

There are many differences between form-input and input tag as well like:

• All html5 validation attributes are same but with a different error message.
  • When there is an error like required an error-msg element is added after the input.
• You can call any input type from the input tag but also select and textarea as well.
• If there is a label attribute is passed, the input will be in a form-group class with a label and input.

Also we added submit event so when the user submits the form, we'll call performLogin method to send form data to some API.

Name attribute

The name attribute is a very normal attribute except it has a simple advantage than the normal name.

Assume we have a name like this name="description[ar]" or name="attributes[{{ index }}][name]"

We can write it as follows:

name="description[ar]"

Change it to:

name="description.ar"

Also

name="attributes[{{ index }}][name]"

Change it to: name="attributes.{{ index }}.name"

As we can see, we use the dot.notation syntax here to define the name.

Value attribute

There are two types of value attribute:

value="some-value"

Using a dynamic value:

and

[value]="this.attributeValue"

<form-input type="text" name="username" placeholder="Enter your username" [value]="this.username"></form-input>

The difference is the value attribute accept a static value.

Also we can bind a value using the {{ prop }} syntax i.e value="{{ this.attributeValue }}".

Regarding the [value] attribute, it follows the two-way data binding concept.

So when the input value is changed, the value of the this.attributeValue is also changed as well and vice versa.

Unlike the value attribute, it follows the one-way data binding for setting input value only.

Model attribute

The [model] attribute is the reverse of value attribute, as this attribute stores the value of the input into a property but not the opposite.

<form-input type="text" placeholder="Enter your username" [model]="this.username"></form-input>

Autofocus attribute

To auto focus on any input when the form is rendered in the dom, use the autofocus attribute with no values.

<form-input type="email" name="email" autofocus></form-input>

Autocomplete off

To disable the input autocompletion use the autocomplete="off" attribute to do so.

<form-input type="password" name="password" autocomplete="off"></form-input>

Label attribute

If the form-input component has a label attribute it will create a form-group element instead of just normal input that will has a label tag as well.

If you defined the label tag, the placeholder will have the same value of the label unless you explicitly declare the placeholder attribute.

label, placeholder, id, name attributes could be static or [dynamic] attributes.

hello-world.component.html

<form (submit)="this.performLogin($el)">
    <form-input type="email" label="Email address" required class="form-control" placeholder="Email address"></form-input>
    <form-input type="password" label="Password" required class="form-control" placeholder="Enter your password"></form-input>
    <button>Login</button>
</form>

Select

As mentioned earlier, we can use the form-input component can handle the type="select" so how does it work?

First let's take an example of usage for it:

hello-world.component.js

class helloWorld {
    init() {
        this.statusOptions = [{
            text: 'Enabled',
            value: 'enabled',
        }, {
            text: 'Disabled',
            value: 'disabled',
        }];

        this.data = {
            status: 'disabled',
        };
    }
}

<form-input type="select" id="status" name="status" label="Status" [options]="this.statusOptions" [value]="this.data.status"></form-input>

This will be rendered to the following html:

<div class="form-group">
    <label for="status">Status</label>
    <select name="status" id="status">
        <option value="enabled">Enabled</option>
        <option value="disabled" selected>Disabled</option>
    </select>
</div>

So the [options] attribute accepts array of objects, each object should have text and value properties to be set for each option.

When passing the [value] attribute, it will start checking the options, the matched value of any option will be set as selected.

Multiple values

If we've a multiple values in our select, [multiple] attribute with true or false value to decide if this select input will have a multiple values.

<form-input type="select" name="permissions[]" [multiple]="true" label="User permissions" [options]="this.permissions" [value]="this.data.permissions"></form-input>

In this case the [value] attribute should be an array of values.

Default option

By default, a please-select option is positioned at the top of the select options, if you want to change the text, use the default-option attribute to modify it.

<form-input type="select" default-option="Please select user permissions" name="permissions[]" [multiple]="true" label="User permissions" [options]="this.permissions" [value]="this.data.permissions"></form-input>

You can change the please-select text from the compiled configurations file.

The default option is using the trans method to translate the text, so you may just place in your locale file please-select as a key and set the translation.

Textarea

Instead of using textarea tag, we can use same form-input component with type="textarea" instead.

All textarea attributes are available here as well.

Validation rules

As mentioned earlier, the validation rules here are same as the html5 validation to make it easier.

Here is full list of validation rules.

email: The email type is used to validate the input as a valid email address.

• i.e <form-input type="email"></form-input>
• number: The number type is used to validate the input as a valid number.
  • i.e <form-input type="number"></form-input>
• required: The input must have a value non-whitespace.
  • i.e <form-input type="text" required></form-input>
• required-if: The input must have a value.
• i.e <form-input type="text" [required-if]="this.name == 'hasan'"></form-input>
• length: The input must have a value with the exact given length.
  • i.e <form-input type="text" length="12"></form-input>
• minlength: The input must have a value with at least the given length.
  • i.e <form-input type="text" minlength="12"></form-input>
• maxlength: The input must have a value with at most the given length.
  • i.e <form-input type="text" maxlength="12"></form-input>
• min: The input must have a value at least the given min number value.
  • i.e <form-input type="text" min="12"></form-input>
• max: The input must have a value less than the given max number value.
  • i.e <form-input type="text" max="12"></form-input>
• pattern: The input value must match the given pattern.
  • i.e <form-input type="text" pattern="^[a-zA-Z]+$"></form-input>
• match: The input value must match the value of the given input.
  • i.e <form-input type="password" name="confirmPassword" match="password"></form-input>
• is: Validate the input value With any of the Supportive-is package.
  • i.e <form-input type="text" is="mobileNumber.eg" placeholder="Enter a mobile number (Egypt number)" name="mobileNumber"></form-input>

Validation rules messages

All of validation rules are stored under validation namespace in the locales.

Here is the default validation rules translations:

Locale.extend('en', 'validation', {
    'minLength': 'Minimum length is %d',
    'min': 'Minimum value is %d',
    'max': 'Maximum value is %d',
    'number': 'Invalid number',
    'length': 'This field length must be %d',
    'maxLength': 'Maximum length is %d',
    'invalid-value': 'Invalid value',
    'email': 'Invalid email address',
    'required': 'This field is required',
    'match': 'This field is not matched with %s',
    'is': {
        'mobileNumber': {
            'eg': 'Invalid mobile number',
        },
    },
});

You can override any validation rule message in your locales/en.js for example like this

locales/en.js

Locale.extend('en', 'validation', {
    'match': 'This field is did not matched with %s input.',
});

// OR
Locale.extend('en', {
    'validation': {
        'match': 'This field is did not matched with %s input.',
    },
};

Compiler options

Any app in src directory has a compiled-config.json to set some compile time options for forms and other packages.

The common app has the following compiler options by default, you may override it in the app compiler file itself i.e blog/compiled-config.json or edit the common compiled file.

Here is the full list of the form options

{
    "validateOn": "input",
    "formGroup": {
        "tag": "div",
        "className": "form-group",
        "errorClass": "group-error",
        "label": {
            "position": "before",
            "className": null,
            "requiredElement": {
                "tag": "span",
                "text": "*",
                "title": "required",
                "className": "required"
            }
        }
    },
    "errorElement": {
        "tag": "div",
        "className": "alert alert-danger",
        "position": "after"
    },
    "select": {
        "defaultOption": "please-select"
    }
}

More packages

We didn't talk about image, file and datepcker inputs, here are more form packages.

• Dropdown list.
• Datepciker.
• File input.
• Image input.
• Checkbox/Radio.
• Autocomplete input.
• Audio recorder.