Sunday, 26 August 2018

How to properly implement nested forms with Validator and Control Value Accessor?

In my application, I have a need for a reusable nested form component, such as Address. I want my AddressComponent to deal with its own FormGroup, so that I don't need to pass it from the outside. At Angular conference (video, presentation) Kara Erikson, a member of Angular Core team recommended to implement ControlValueAccessor for the nested forms, making the nested form effectively just a FormControl.

I also figured out that I need to implement Validator, so that the validity of my nested form can be seen by the main form.

In the end, I created the SubForm class that the nested form needs to extend:

export abstract class SubForm implements ControlValueAccessor, Validator {

  form: FormGroup;

  public onTouched(): void {
  }

  public writeValue(value: any): void {
    if (value) {
      this.form.patchValue(value, {emitEvent: false});
      this.onTouched();
    }
  }

  public registerOnChange(fn: (x: any) => void): void {
    this.form.valueChanges.subscribe(fn);
  }

  public registerOnTouched(fn: any): void {
    this.onTouched = fn;
  }

  setDisabledState(isDisabled: boolean): void {
    isDisabled ? this.form.disable()
      : this.form.enable();
  }

  validate(c: AbstractControl): ValidationErrors | null {
    return this.form.valid ? null : {subformerror: 'Problems in subform!'};
  }

  registerOnValidatorChange(fn: () => void): void {
    this.form.statusChanges.subscribe(fn);
  }
}

If you want your component to be used as a nested form, you need to do the following:

@Component({
  selector: 'app-address',
  templateUrl: './address.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./address.component.css'],
  providers: [
    {
      provide: NG_VALUE_ACCESSOR,
      useExisting: forwardRef(() => AddressComponent),
      multi: true
    },
    {
      provide: NG_VALIDATORS,
      useExisting: forwardRef(() => AddressComponent),
      multi: true
    }
  ],
})

export class AddressComponent extends SubForm {

  constructor(private fb: FormBuilder) {
    super();
    this.form = this.fb.group({
      street: this.fb.control('', Validators.required),
      city: this.fb.control('', Validators.required)
    });
  }

}

Everything works well unless I check the validity status of my subform from the template of my main form. In this case ExpressionChangedAfterItHasBeenCheckedError is produced, see ngIf statement (stackblitz code) :

<form action=""
      [formGroup]="form"
      class="main-form">
  <h4>Upper form</h4>
  <label>First name</label>
  <input type="text"
         formControlName="firstName">
         <div *ngIf="form.controls['address'].valid">Hi</div> 
  <app-address formControlName="address"></app-address>
  <p>Form:</p>
  <pre></pre>
  <p>Validity</p>
  <pre></pre>


</form>



from How to properly implement nested forms with Validator and Control Value Accessor?

No comments:

Post a Comment