React forms with Formik and Unit Testing with react-testing-library

Setup

Formik is a nice library to speed up the process of creating forms in React. It handles all the basic functionality like the form state, validation and submission.

Let’s begin by creating an empty create-react-app https://create-react-app.dev/

npx create-react-app my-app

Install the formik library

yarn add formik

Using formik components

Remove the example code generated and import the formik library and some components in App.js. We will use the react

useState

hook just to show the values of the form in this example.

import React, { useState } from 'react'
import { Formik, Form, Field } from 'formik'
function App() {
  const [result, setResult] = useState('')
  return (
    // Formik is the main component that handles all the logic
    // Form is just a regular html <form> wrapper
    <Formik>
      {() => (
        <Form>
        </Form>
      )}
      </Formik>
  );
}
export default App

Let’s use the

Field

formik component to create some fields. Check the docs to see all possible props available https://jaredpalmer.com/formik/docs/api/field#props-1

A default Field is an input type=”text”

<Field name="fieldName" />

For the select, we specify the options as children

<Field as="select" name="color" value="none">
    <option value="none">Pick a color</option>
    <option value="red">Red</option>
    <option value="green">Green</option>
    <option value="blue">Blue</option>
  </Field>

In this example we are going to use a textarea to show the values after submit

<Field as="textarea" value={result} rows={5} />

Form props are passed down to children giving many options for custom fields

<Field name="email">
    {({ field }) => (
      <div>
        <label>email:</label>
        <input type="email" required placeholder="Email" {...field} />
      </div>
    )}
  </Field>

We can go further and just set a component prop. Form props will passed to this component

function CustomInput({ field, form, ...props }) {
  return <input {...field} {...props} />
}

<Field
  name="name"
  required
  placeholder="Name"
  component={CustomInput}
/>

A

type="submit"

will automatically handle form onSubmit

<button type="submit">Submit</button>

Put everything together

This is the final example form created with formik. Formik needs the

initialValues

prop to work properly.

import React, { useState } from 'react'
import { Formik, Form, Field } from 'formik'
function CustomInput({ field, form, ...props }) {
  return <input {...field} {...props} />
}
function App() {
  const [result, setResult] = useState('')
  return (
    <Formik
      initialValues={{
        email: '',
        name: '',
        color: 'red'
      }}
      onSubmit={(values, actions) => {
        setResult(JSON.stringify(values))
      }}
    >
      {() => (
        <Form>
          <Field as="select" name="color" value="none">
            <option value="none">Pick a color</option>
            <option value="red">Red</option>
            <option value="green">Green</option>
            <option value="blue">Blue</option>
          </Field>
          <br />
          <Field name="email">
            {({ field }) => (
              <div>
                <label>email:</label>
                <input
                  type="email"
                  required
                  placeholder="Email"
                  {...field}
                />
              </div>
            )}
          </Field>
          <br />
          <Field
            name="name"
            required
            placeholder="Name"
            component={CustomInput}
          />
          <br />
          <button type="submit">Submit</button>
          <br />
          <br />
          <Field
            style={{ width: '100%'}}
            as="textarea"
            value={result}
            rows={2}
          />
        </Form>
      )}
      </Formik>
  )
}
export default App

Not so fancy, but I didn’t wanted to pollute the code with styling.

Unit testing with React Testing Library

Normally it’s enough to use Jest and Enzyme to test components, but with Formik, internal React state and events get more complex under the hood and a simple

input.simulate('change')

doesn’t work. Luckily there’s a nice piece of software called Testing Library that has support for many frontend libraries and frameworks https://testing-library.com/docs/intro

First of all, install the library as dev dependency

yarn add --dev '@testing-library/react'

Test if the App doesn’t crash first

it('renders without crashing', () => {
  const div = document.createElement('div')
  ReactDOM.render(<App />, div)
})

Now let’s pick all the field elements to be able to fire events with them

it('submits correct values', () => {
  const { container } = render(<App />)
  const name = container.querySelector('input[name="name"]')
  const email = container.querySelector('input[name="email"]')
  const color = container.querySelector('input[name="color"]')
  const submit = container.querySelector('button[type="submit"]')
})

Let’s change their values

fireEvent.change(name, {
    target: {
      value: 'mockname'
    }
  })
  fireEvent.change(email, {
    target: {
      value: 'mockemail'
    }
  })
  fireEvent.change(color, {
    target: {
      value: 'mockcolor'
    }
  })

We get this error

Warning: An update to Formik inside a test was not wrapped in act(...).
    
    When testing, code that causes React state updates should be wrapped into act(...):
    
    act(() => {
      /* fire events that update state */
    });
    /* assert on the output */

This means that something changed Formik state inside the test, we need to wait for these changes. act is also good, but instead of act, we can also use Testing Library’s

wait

https://testing-library.com/docs/dom-testing-library/api-async#wait

Notice that we will change the test to

async
it("submits correct values", async () => {
  const { container } = render(<App />)
  const name = container.querySelector('input[name="name"]')
  const email = container.querySelector('input[name="email"]')
  const color = container.querySelector('select[name="color"]')
  const submit = container.querySelector('button[type="submit"]')
  const results = container.querySelector("textarea");
  await wait(() => {
    fireEvent.change(name, {
      target: {
        value: "mockname"
      }
    })
  })
  await wait(() => {
    fireEvent.change(email, {
      target: {
        value: "mock@email.com"
      }
    })
  })
  await wait(() => {
    fireEvent.change(color, {
      target: {
        value: "green"
      }
    })
  })
  await wait(() => {
    fireEvent.click(submit)
  })
  expect(results.innerHTML).toBe(
    '{"email":"mock@email.com","name":"mockname","color":"green"}'
  )
})

Now we get the correct results and thanks to Testing Library we focus on functionality and DOM behavior instead of dealing with React details.

You can go further and read Formik documentation to create complex forms and Fields. Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: Testing Library ‘wait’ is deprecated now. Use ‘waitFor’ instead.