A JavaScript port of Django's form-handling library, which runs in browsers in Node.js
- Demo page - uses a FormSet to create multiple instances of the same Form, with just about every type of Field in newforms.
- Fragile - use of newforms and ModelChoiceField in Sacrum for creation and validation of add/edit forms.
Node.js:
npm install newforms
var forms = require('newforms')
Browser bundles (all dependencies included) which export a forms variable
are included with the Node.js install (in ./node_modules/newforms/), or
can be downloaded below:
- newforms.js - 235 kB (54.8 kB gzipped)
- newforms.min.js - 84 kB (23.8 kB gzipped)
Browser bundles also export a require() function, which can be used to
access bundled dependencies, which are:
- Concur - sugar for inheritance
- DOMBuilder - interchangeable DOM Element / HTML generation
- Certain submodules of isomorph - miscellaneous utilities
If you already have a require variable you don't want to be overwritten,
call require.noConflict():
<script src="/js/newforms.min.js"></script> <script>require.noConflict()</script>
As direct porting from Django is nearing completion, the resulting API is very much focused on the server side. As such, Node.js is probably the best place to use newforms in anger at the moment, as you'll be working with a request/response cycle, which is Django forms' usual mode of operation.
Client side features, such as hooking into the DOM for instant validation and feedback, will be the focus of future work.
In lieu of guide documentation, head over to the Django forms documentation for a quick overview of the concepts behind this form library.
Here's a quick guide to getting started with newforms.
For Node.js, if you clone this repo and install express and jade via
npm, you can runnode demo/demo.jsto see a basic example of newforms in action.All example code will assume you've imported like so:
var forms = require('newforms')For convenience and compactness, the
newoperator is optional when using newforms' Fields, Widgets and other constructors which are commonly used while defining a Form, such as ValidationError -- howevernewis not automatically optional for the Form and FormSet constructors you create.Form constructors are created using the
forms.Formconstructor'sextend()function, which comes courtesy of Concur. This takes anObjectargument defining form fields and any other properties for the form's prototype (validation methods etc.), returning a constructor which inherits fromBaseForm:var ContactForm = forms.Form.extend({ subject : forms.CharField({maxLength: 100}) , message : forms.CharField() , sender : forms.EmailField() , ccMyself : forms.BooleanField({required: false}) }) var form = new ContactForm()FormSet constructors are created using the
forms.formsetFactoryfunction, which takes a Form constructor and any additional properties for the FormSet's prototype defined as anObject, returning a FormSet constructor which inherits fromBaseFormSet:var ArticleForm = forms.Form.extend({ title : forms.CharField() , pubDate : forms.DateField() }) var ArticleFormSet = forms.formsetFactory(ArticleForm, {extra: 1}) var formSet = new ArticleFormSet()Custom row styling:
requiredCssClassanderrorCssClasscan be added to any form and the classes will be applied to each matching row in the form output. To add extra CSS classes to a particular row, pass theextraClassesproperty in the field definition. To add classes to all fields in a form, userowCssClass. All of the above are added to the class attribute of the containing element, e.g.,<tr>,<li>or<p>:var PostForm = forms.Form.extend({ // Fields postTitle : forms.CharField({maxLength: 100}) , postBody : forms.CharField({extraClasses: 'larger island'}) , allowComments : forms.BooleanField({required: false}) // CSS settings , rowCssClass : 'form-row' // A class to style all fields , requiredCssClass : 'required' // A class to style required fields , errorCssClass : 'error' // A class to style fields with errors })The API is largely consistent with Django's API, with the following rules of thumb for converting between the two:
Where Django accepts keyword arguments, in Javascript a single
Objectargument is expected, with arguments expressed as its properties.Note that this applies anywhere Django accepts a keyword argument, even if the convention in Django is topass certain keyword arguments positionally, e.g. when passing in POST data to a Form constructor.
Django (by convention):
f = MyForm(request.POST)
Javascript:
var f = new MyForm({data: req.body})Method and variable names which use
underscores_in_pythonbecomecamelCasedInJavaScript.As mentioned above, the
newoperator is optional for newforms form components.Django:
forms.CharField(max_length=100)
JavaScript (the following lines are equivalent):
new forms.CharField({maxLength: 100}) forms.CharField({maxLength: 100})Due to limited cross-browser support for properties in JavaScript, Form and FormSet properties from Django such as
cleaned_dataanderrorsbecome method calls; e.g.cleanedData()anderrors().It's ugly, but it works everywhere.
Objects which would be coerced to a string for display in Django, such as Forms, FormSets and ErrorLists, have a
defaultRendering()method.This is required because newforms can output DOM Elements or HTML from the same objects and there's no standard
toDOM()-type method in JavaScript. If you're operating in HTML mode, you can coerce these objects to string to get HTML out of them, as theirtoString()methods make use ofdefaultRendering().
The unit tests exercise the library thoroughly, so dip in for examples of further usage in the meantime.
API documentation is underway, but guide documentation is yet to be started:
Copyright (c) 2011, Jonathan Buchanan
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