Extending Felte

You might have noticed that both reporters and validators make use of the extend property in the configuration for createForm. This is because both of these make use of Felte's extensibility. We will call any package that extends Felte an extender from now.

An extender is a simple function that gets called when createForm is called, when the form action is called and whenever the form changes.

function extender({
  form,
  controls,
  stage,
  data,
  errors,
  warnings,
  touched,
  config,
  addValidator,
  addTransformer,
  setFields,
  validate,
  reset,

  // Since 1.2.0
  isValid,
  isValidating,
  isSubmitting,
  isDirty,
  interacted,
  handleSubmit,
  createSubmitHandler,
}) {
  // ...
  return {
    destroy() {
      // ...
    },
    onSubmitError(errors) {
      // ...
    },
  }
}

• form refers to the HTMLFormElement of the form you're handling. This is not available during the SETUP stage.
• controls refer to the the form controls of the form that are handled by Felte. This is not available during the SETUP stage.
• stage is a string that denotes the current stage of the form. Possible values: 'SETUP', 'MOUNT' and 'UPDATE'.
• data is an observable that contains the values of the form.
• errors is an observable that contains the errors of the form.
• warnings is an observable that contains the warnings of the form.
• touched is an observable that contains the touched values of the form.
• isValid (since 1.2.0) is an observable that contains a boolean showing if the form is valid.
• isValidating (since 1.2.0) is an observable that contains a boolean showing if validations are running.
• isSubmitting (since 1.2.0) is an observable that contains a boolean showing if the form is submitting.
• isDirty (since 1.2.0) is an observable that contains a boolean showing if the user has interacted with the form.
• interacted (since 1.2.0) is an observable that contains either null or a string with the name of the last field the user interacted with.
• config is the configuration object passed by the user to createForm.
• addValidator is a function that accepts a validation function to add to the user's validate or warn configuration. Optionally accepts an object as second parameter with the following properties:
  • debounce is a boolean. If true, adds to debounced validators. Default: false.
  • level is either "warning" or "error". Defines if the validator should be added to warn or validate respectively.
• addTransformer is a function that accepts a transform function to add to the user's transform configuration.
• setFields is the same setter described in the Helper functions section.
• validate is the same helper described in the Helper functions section.
• reset is the same helper described in the Helper functions section.
• handleSubmit (since 1.2.0) is a function that triggers a form submission.
• createSubmitHandler (since 1.2.0) is the same helper descriped in the Helper functions section.

If you're subscribing to any store, or adding any event listeners in the extender, you will want to unsubscribe and/or remove any event listeners in the destroy function that you can return from the extender. If you're not using any events or subscribing to any store, you don't need to set this.

If you want to perform an action whenever there are errors on a submit event (e.g. server validation), you can handle them in the onSubmitError function. This will receive the current values contained in the errors store.

You may check Felte's repo and go over any validator or reporter source code. You'll find they're quite simple.

NOTE: If you check the validator packages you'll notice that you can change the signature of the configuration object for createForm in order for it to be used by your extender.