Documentation suggests using withForm if you want to be able to "reuse whole subsections of your form" - is this wrong?

[rsslldnphy]

The form composition docs page includes an "API Usage Guidance" tree which suggests that you should use withForm if you need to "reuse whole subsections of your form".

I may have misunderstood, but from what I've read it seems that withForm is not intended to be / capable of being used in this way, specifically to make reusable subsections. As the formOptions have to be identical for the parent and child forms, components created with withForm are not reusable - they can only be used in the specific parent form with the matching formOptions. Is this correct?

So withForm allows you to break a big form down into smaller components that can be composed together, but those components cannot be reused across multiple forms.

If this is correct then maybe the tree diagram should be updated with different wording? If this isn't correct (which would be great as I really need this!) then an example of how to do it in the docs would be really helpful.

[rsslldnphy]

Can I ask again for an answer to this? The docs clearly state that you should be able to reuse whole subsections of your form but that doesn’t seem to be the case, unless I’m missing something, as defaultValues have to be the same. Is that correct?

[LeCarbonator]

Can I ask again for an answer to this? The docs clearly state that you should be able to reuse whole subsections of your form but that doesn’t seem to be the case, unless I’m missing something, as defaultValues have to be the same. Is that correct?

The docs could be rewritten to be more precise.

What is meant by reusable form components is something like the following use case:

• You have an array of objects, 3 fields each
• You want to create a component to map the array to that builds those 3 fields

withForm allows you to create a component that needs only an index and can build the rest of the logic itself.

The reason that defaultValues and validators must align is because behaviour would be inconsistent between components. You receive the entire FormApi component, except that the subsection would receive the wrong data (which has impacts on methods such as reset())

This issue of subsections of forms is being addressed in the future, but withForm is not the way to go.

If you know that sections of the code will always be together (example: days of the week and 7 corresponding booleans), you can try to create a 'group' of the data:

- Sections with 7 booleans for every day
+ Object DayOfWeek that contains the 7 booleans

- Put booleans at the top level
+ Put booleans in object

- Manage each field separately
+ Update the DayOfWeek object at once

Example:
form.setFieldValue('path.toWeek', previousObject => ({ ...previousObject, monday: true }))

[juanvilladev]

@rsslldnphy anything defined different inside withForms options will render the subsection not entirely reusable (defaultValues, validators, listeners, etc...). This by design is not meant to create entire reusable form sections where you're sharing fields.

I think what you're looking for is something like FormGroups which should solve this in the future (based on my understanding of them).

[rsslldnphy]

@LeCarbonator

This issue of subsections of forms is being addressed in the future

Good to know, thanks!

If you know that sections of the code will always be together (example: days of the week and 7 corresponding booleans), you can try to create a 'group' of the data:

I will give this a go soon - I am not sure it will work for my use case, which is a fairly complex array of fields which can in some cases themselves contain arrays of fields, but it might? This would basically be creating a composite field, if I understand correctly?

[LeCarbonator]

@LeCarbonator

This issue of subsections of forms is being addressed in the future

Good to know, thanks!

If you know that sections of the code will always be together (example: days of the week and 7 corresponding booleans), you can try to create a 'group' of the data:

I will give this a go soon - I am not sure it will work for my use case, which is a fairly complex array of fields which can in some cases themselves contain arrays of fields, but it might? This would basically be creating a composite field, if I understand correctly?

Yeah, a composite field would sum it up well.

[rsslldnphy]

have had a crack at doing what i need with composite fields but for my specific use case afaict it would basically mean i'd be opting out of all the benefits of the library for almost all of the form. will wait to see what comes out of the work to make subsections. is there anywhere this work is being tracked i can follow along?

[LeCarbonator]

have had a crack at doing what i need with composite fields but for my specific use case afaict it would basically mean i'd be opting out of all the benefits of the library for almost all of the form. will wait to see what comes out of the work to make subsections. is there anywhere this work is being tracked i can follow along?

There's no place to follow along at the moment.

If you really need it, it's not impossible to do at the moment, but it sacrifices type safety. See this discussion answer: #1200 (reply in thread)