Meteor/React Smart Form

SmartForm is a package for Meteor/React that allows simple and easy form validation and error handling.

NOTE: This package is currently pre-1.0 and should be considered not production-ready

Installation

$ meteor add ffxsam:react-smartform

Example Usage

render() {
  return <div>
    <SmartForm.Form id="my-form" onSubmit={this.handleSubmit}>
      <SmartForm.Input
        id="name"
        formId="my-form" // links this element to #my-form
        required // field is required
        validateAs={/^[A-Za-z\s'.-]*$/} // validate field using regex
        weakValidation // failed regex match won't prevent form submission
      />
      
      <SmartForm.Error
        linkedTo="my-form.name" // error is linked to the field above
        invalidMsg="Name contains possibly invalid characters."
        requiredMsg="Name is required."
        onError={this.nameError} // you can have your own optional callback in case of error
      />
      
      <input type="submit" />
    </SmartForm.Form>
  </div>
}

The SmartForm.Input component will take care of any validation and, in case of errors, it will display your invalidMsg or requiredMsg depending on which error occurred. SmartForm.Error is a separate component so that it can be placed anywhere independently of its corresponding SmartForm.Input. Standard props you'd expect to be able to use such as className can be used on any of these components.

Reference

SmartForm.Form

Properties

• id: {String} [required] The id of the form
• onSubmit: {Function} [required] Function to call when user clicks the submit button. The callback will be called with two arguments:
  • error: {Object} Either undefined or an object of type Meteor.Error in the case of any form fields being invalid.
  • formData: {Object} An object containing all of the input element IDs, with the following properties:
    • errorReason: {Symbol} Error code for this field. Either SmartForm.ERROR_NONE, SmartForm.ERROR_REQUIRED, SmartForm.ERROR_INVALID, or SmartForm.ERROR_SUSPECT (more on this one below).
    • valid: {Boolean} Indicates if the field is in a valid state.
    • value: {String} The current value of the input field.

SmartForm.Input

Properties

• formId: {String} [required] The id of the form this input should be linked to
• id: {String} [required] The id of the input element
• required: {Boolean} Indicates whether this field is required
• validateAs: {RegEx/String} If you wish for this field to provide validation, you can either pass your own RegEx, or a string specifying the type of value being passed in. Currently accepted strings for validateAs are:
  • "email"
  • "phone" (US 10-digit phone number)
  • "zip" (US 5-digit ZIP)
• weakValidation: {Boolean} If this property is present, the field will only perform a weak validation. In other words, if the value in the field does not pass validation against the validateAs field, the SmartForm.Error component will still show its invalidMsg message, but the field will remain in a valid state, and SmartForm.ERROR_SUSPECT will be set as the field error instead of SmartForm.ERROR_INVALID. Weak validation is recommended for fields such as email address, where standards might change in the future (e.g. we didn't used to have domain suffixes greater than three characters!)
• defaultValue: {String} A default value for the input field

SmartForm.Checkbox

Properties

• formId: {String} [required] The id of the form this input should be linked to
• id: {String} [required] The id of the input element
• defaultChecked: {Boolean} Indicates whether the checkbox should be checked by default

SmartForm.Select

Properties

• formId: {String} [required] The id of the form this input should be linked to
• id: {String} [required] The id of the input element
• required: {Boolean} Indicates whether this field is required

SmartForm.Error

Properties

• invalidMsg: {String} The message to display when the field is invalid or suspect
• requiredMsg: {String} The message to display when the field is required but empty
• linkedTo: {String} [required] The form element the error should be linked to, in the format of "form-id.element-id"
• onError: {Function} A callback which is invoked in case of error, and is passed two arguments:
  • errorReason: {Symbol} The reason for the error. Either SmartForm.ERROR_INVALID, SmartForm.ERROR_SUSPECT, or SmartForm.ERROR_REQUIRED
  • value: {String} The value of the field

Future Plans (contributions welcome!)

• The ability to fire a callback as soon as the user tabs out of a field (e.g. to check if a username is available)
• More input types (select, textarea, etc)