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React Templator

A small 8kb library for automatic form generation & validation in React & React Native. Define form schemas using your own components and have error handling, layout, auto-refocus and more handled for you.

Overview

Creating forms in React & React Native with good UX can be a pain. If you have a form with 20 inputs, that's 20 new values in your state, and 200 new lines of boilerplate code. But it shouldn't be this way - your form containers should be focussed on the business-logic of your form. That's where React Templator comes in.

React Templator allows you to define a schema for each form in your application. This is an array of inputs and layout elements for each form. your form will automatically be generated with your components and all error handling and other 'UX features' will be handled for you.

React Templator is dynamic and does not define any form components itself, instead you use your own. Simply pass an array of elements to <FormProvider> and you can use them in your schemas.

Check the project in /example to view a working example of this library, or check the hosted version

React Templator example

Installation

npm install react-templator
# or
yarn add react-templator

Usage

Deifne a list of components you want to use in your form. You only have to do this once per application. Instead of <input/> you can use any of your own components, as long as ref points to the real input element (Make sure to use React.forwardRef).

const elements = {
  'text-input': ({
    name,
    value,

    tabIndex, // Element tab index
    ref, // Ref to your input prop
    error, // The current field error
    label, // Used by validators (recommended)
    yourProp, // Any prop you want to pass through your schema
    onChange, // Call this with the new value when your input is changed
    validate // Call this when you want to validate the field. Takes a 'refocus' parameter
  }) => (
    <div>
      {yourProp} {label}
      <input
        ref={ref}
        type='text'
        name={name}
        value={value}
        tabIndex={tabIndex}
        onChange={(event) => {
          onChange(event.currentTarget.value);
        }}
        onBlur={() => validate(false)}
      />
      <div className='error'>{error}</div>
    </div>
  ),
  submit: ({ label, tabIndex }) => (
    <input type='submit' tabIndex={tabIndex} value={label} />
  )
};

Wrap your entire app or form page in a <FormProvider/>

// app.js
import { FormProvider } from "react-templator";
import { elements } from "./your-elements";

render(){
  <FormProvider elements={elements}>
    // Your app
  </FormProvider>
}

Create a new form schema for your form, which defines all the inputs and their properties of your form. Here, we'll define two text inputs and a submit button.

const schema = [
  {
    // Required fields
    type: 'text-input',
    name: 'first_name',
    label: 'First name',

    // Additional fields (these are passed to your component and can be anything)
    yourProp: 'A field: ',

    // Validators
    required: true,
    minLength: 2,
    maxLength: 50
  },
  {
    type: 'text-input',
    name: 'last_name',
    label: 'Last name',

    yourProp: 'Another: ',

    required: true
  },
  {
    type: 'submit',
    name: 'submit'
  }
];

Finally, use the <Form/> component and pass it your schema, and a onSubmit function.

<Form
  schema={schema}
  onSubmit={(data) => {
    // Called when the form has submitted and all the local validation has passed
    alert('Form submitted! Data:', JSON.stringify(data));
  }}
/>

This is the result of our example: Example result

Dynamic props

This is nice for static forms, but what about forms that require custom properties such as loading states & custom data & errors from a server?

React Templator handles this functionality with dynamicProps. Simply pass a dynamicProps prop to the <Form/>, which is a {"input-name": props} object to have different props automatically passed to your component.

In the following example, we'll define a new Select component with custom data and also add a loading state to our button.

const elements = {
  // ... Other inputs

  select: ({
    ref,
    name,
    label,
    error,
    value,
    tabIndex,
    yourProp,
    onChange,

    // Dynamic props
    options = []
  }) => (
    <div>
      {label}
      <select
        name={name}
        onBlur={() => validate(false)}
        onChange={(event) => {
          onChange(event.currentTarget.value);
        }}
      >
        {options.map((option) => (
          <option value={option.value}>{option.label}</option>
        ))}
      </select>

      <div className='error'>{error}</div>
    </div>
  ),
  submit: ({
    label,
    value,
    tabIndex,

    // Dynamic props
    isLoading
  }) => (
    <input
      type='submit'
      tabIndex={tabIndex}
      value={isLoading ? 'Loading...' : label}
    />
  )
};

W'll modify our schema to add our new select component

const schema = [
  ...
  {
    type: 'select',
    name: 'fave_color',
    label: 'Favourite color',
    required: true
  }
  ...
];

When we render our <Form/> component, we can proide it with a dynamicProps prop to give our new select component some options, and our submit button a loading state. We'll also fake a server error if the last name is not vrondakis.

const [isLoading, setIsLoading] = useState();

<Form
  schema={schema}
  dynamicProps={{
    submit: {
      isLoading
    },
    fave_color: { colors }
  }}
  onSubmit={(data, setErrors) => {
    setIsLoading(true);

    // Fake a network request
    setTimeout(() => {
      setIsLoading(false);

      // Fake an error from the server
      if (data.last_name !== 'vrondakis') {
        return setErrors({
          last_name: "Last name must be 'vrondakis'"
        });
      }

      alert(`Form submitted! Data: ${JSON.stringify(data)}`);
    }, 2000);
  }}
/>;

The result of the previous example is:

Layout elements

What if you don't want a simple list of elements in your form, and instead want a form with a different layout, such as two fields next to eachother, or different section labels? This is where layoutElements come in.

You can define layout elements which can have unlimited nested form inputs / other form layouts! Layouts can also have custom props passed into them from the schema, just like form inputs.

Start by defining your layout element

const layoutElements = {
  section: ({ children, customProps, yourProp }) => (
    <div
      style={{
        marginBottom: 10,
        backgroundColor: 'rgba(255,0,0,.4)'
      }}
    >
      {yourProp}
      <div>{children}</div>
    </div>
  )
};

Then you can pass your layout elements into your <FormProvider/> component just like you did with your elements.

<FormProvider elements={elements} layoutElements={layoutElements} />

You can now use your new layout element in your form schema.

const schema: IFormSchema = [
  ...{
    type: 'section',
    yourProp: 'Your dog',
    children: [
      {
        type: 'text-input',
        name: 'dog-name',
        label: 'Name',
        required: true
      },

      {
        type: 'text-input',
        name: 'breed',
        label: 'Breed',
        required: true
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    type: 'submit',
    name: 'submit'
  }
];

The result of our example is this:

Example layout

Validators

Default validators

"required"          => Requires the value to be there
"number"            => Requires the value to be a number
"minLength": 4      => Requires the value to be at least 4 characters
"maxLength": 18     => Requires the value to be a maximum of 18 characters

Provider-wide validators

You can provide a validators object to your <FormProvider/> to define your own validators which can be used on any element in your schema.

This example defines a validator which an expects an object with a specific property:

const validators = {
  "has-property": (name, value, data) => !value || !value[data] ? `${name} must have ${data}`
}

...

<FormProvider elements={elements} validators={validators}/>

Then you can use it in your schema:

const schema = {
  {
    type: 'text-input',
    name: 'last_name',
    label: 'Last name',
    "has-property": "some-property"
  }
}

This will validate that the input value is an object with a "some-property" property.

Specific element validators

Each element in a schema can also provide its own validator through the use of the validator property, which takes a function with parameters of validator name and validatior function. This function should return false if there is no error, and string if there is an error.

const schema = [
  {
    type: 'text-input',
    name: 'last_name',
    label: 'Last name',
    validator: (name, value) => name !== 'hello' && `${name} must be 'hello'`
  }
];

Usage with React Native

Since React Templator comes with no UI components, using the library with React Native is just as easy as React, with a few differences.

Instead of the <Form/> component, be sure to use the <FormNative>
Instead of using onBlur to validate your components, use onSubmitEditing and pass true to validate (refocus input on error).
Since React Native doesn't have the concept of forms or submitting them, you need to add some extra logic to your submit button component to get it to submit the form. Every element in your schema is passed a submit property, which you can use to submit your form. For example:

const elements = {
  "submit": ({submit}) => (
    <TouchableOpacity onPress={submit}><Text>Submit</Text>
  )
}

Notes

What's the difference between this and other form libraries such as Formik?

React Templator allows you to define your components once and use them in anywhere in multiple schemas. This leads to less boilerplate and also has other advantages - you don't have to define your schema your app, you could load it dynically from an API as JSON, or generate it on the fly.