Form Building with Prismane

Introduction

Greetings, everyone! Welcome to our tutorial on form building with Prismane. Throughout this guide, we’ll explore the process of constructing forms using Prismane and dive into the utilization of our built-in validators. Let’s embark on this journey together!

All of the code in the example below can be directly accessed through the GitHub Repository.

useForm hook

Prismane makes form building straightforward. By leveraging the useForm hook, you gain a seamless approach to constructing, validating, and handling forms. The upcoming section provides step-by-step guidance on creating a basic login form.

Import hook

We can import the useForm hook from the @prismane/core/hooks entry.

import { useForm } from "@prismane/core/hooks"

Initialize the hook

Now, we can initialize the hook and get the handleReset , handleSubmit and the register functions.

The handleReset function manages form resets by clearing the hook's state upon reset.

The handleSubmit function handles the form submit, and provides the state values of the form and the state of the form. The handleSubmit accepts up to three parameters. The first one is the event object, the second one is the onSubmit callback function and the last one is the onError callback function that is called, when the form fails to validate.

The register function simplifies field registration, ensuring proper and necessary props are assigned.

const { handleReset, handleSubmit, register } = useForm({})

Add fields to the hook

Great! Now, we have to tell our hook what fields we are going to have. Simply provide a fields property within the configuration object passed to the useForm hook.

Within the fields object, include properties with names corresponding to the intended field names.

For each field, set a value property indicating the initial value of the field.

In our case we are going to have a username and a password fields.

const { handleReset, handleSubmit, register } = useForm({
    fields: {
        username: {
            value: ""    
        },
        password: {
            value: ""
        }    
    }
})

Add Form

Now, we need to add our Form and pass the onSubmit and onReset props.

import { Center, Card, Form } from "@prismane/core";
import { useForm } from "@prismane/core/hooks";

function App() {
  const { handleReset, handleSubmit, register } = useForm({
    fields: {
      username: {
        value: "",
      },
      password: {
        value: "",
      },
    },
  });
  return (
    <Center w="100vw" h="100vh">
      <Card>
        <Form
          onSubmit={(e: SubmitEvent) => handleSubmit(e, (v) => console.log(v))}
                    onReset={handleReset}
        ></Form>
      </Card>
    </Center>
  );
}
export default App;

As you can see, we’ve linked the handleSubmit function to the onSubmit event. We've supplied just two parameters to handleSubmit - the event object and the onSubmit callback function, responsible for logging values to the console upon successful submission.

Additionally, we assigned the handleReset function to the onReset prop, ensuring a reset of our components' values and form state.

Add fields

Now, let’s add our fields and a submit button. We are going to use the TextField for our username and the PasswordField for our password.

import { ..., TextField, PasswordField, Button } from "@prismane/core";
...

...
<Form
  onSubmit={(e: SubmitEvent) => handleSubmit(e, (v) => console.log(v))}
    onReset={handleReset}
>
  <TextField />
  <PasswordField />
    <Button type="submit">Submit Form</Button>
</Form>
...

Register fields

Great! Now, lets register our fields. To do that, we are going to use the register function that we got from the useForm hook.

We need to pass a single parameter to the register function, which is the name of the field undergoing registration.

💡Make sure to provide the same name to the register function, as the one that you provided in the fields object, otherwise the field will not register correctly!

The register function returns an object that contains essential field properties. Because of that, we must spread this function across the component. The register function returns properties such as onChange, onBlur, onFocus, value, name, and id.

...
  <TextField {...register("username")} placeholder="Enter username" label="Username:" />
  <PasswordField {...register("password")} placeholder="Enter password" label="Password:" />
...

Great! Now, let’s try out our form and see what is logged to the console!

Prismane’s Validators

Every field within the useForm hook has a validators property. Within this property's object, we list the validators assigned to the field.

The validators must be added in following order, because the hook validates them one by one. If one returns an error, the hook stops validating and handles the error.

Each validator is represented by a function that takes the field’s value as the parameter v, passes this value to the validator function, and then invokes the validator function.

Prismane’s validator functions return null when there is no error. In case of an error, they provide an error message as a string.

Adding Validators

In our example, we are going to add the required and username validators to our username field and we are going to add the required and the min validator to the password field.

The required validator ensures that the given value is defined and not empty, confirming it has a valid and meaningful content. It can handle both numbers, strings and booleans.

The username validators checks if the provided value is a valid username or not. It’s regex can be overwritten, if you provide a regex as the second parameter.

The min validator checks if the provided value’s length is more than a given number. The error message can be personalized to the field, by providing a third parameter, which is the field’s name.

Import validators

Firstly, we have to import our validators from the @prismane/core/validators entry.

import { required, username, min } from "@prismane/core/validators";

Add validators to fields in useForm hook

Next, we are going to add the validators to the validators property of each of our fields.

...
username: {
  value: "",
  validators: {
    required: (v) => required(v),
    username: (v) => username(v),
  },
},
password: {
  value: "",
  validators: {
    required: (v) => required(v),
    min: (v) => min(v, 4),
  },
},
...

Great! Now, let’s see the final result

💡 As you can see, form submission is unavailable until all of the fields are error-free.

Fantastic job! You now can successfully create forms and handle them using Prismane!

Thank you for reading!

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