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Unstyled form control

The FormControlUnstyled component is a utility that lets you associate a form input with auxillary components, such as labels, error indicators, or helper text.

Basic usage

FormControlUnstyled wraps an input with other associated components in order to make the state of the input available to those components.

For instance, you may want to show an additional element asking the user to enter a value if the input is empty, or display a warning icon if the entered value is incorrect.

Name *

<FormControlUnstyled defaultValue="" required>
  <Label>Name</Label>
  <Input />
  <HelperText />
</FormControlUnstyled>

useFormControlUnstyledContext hook

The FormControlUnstyled component provides a context that can be read by the useFormControlUnstyledContext hook.

You can use the useFormControlUnstyledContext hook to enable integration between custom form inputs and FormControlUnstyled. You can also use it to read the form control's state and react to its changes in a custom component.

The demo below shows both:

  • CustomInput is a wrapper around a native HTML <input> that adds FormControlUnstyled integration.
  • ControlStateDisplay reads the state of the form control and displays it as text.

empty | not focused

Note that even though FormControlUnstyled supports both controlled and uncontrolled-style API (i.e. it accepts value and defaultValue props), useFormControlUnstyledContext returns only the controlled value. This way, you don't have to implement both in your custom input—FormControlUnstyled does this for you.

useFormControlUnstyledContext returns an object with the following fields:

Name Type Description
disabled boolean Represents the value of the FormControlUnstyled's disabled prop.
error boolean Represents the value of the FormControlUnstyled component's error prop. Note that it is not calculated automatically (i.e. it's not set when required: true and value: '').
filled boolean Set to true if value is not empty.
focused boolean Set to true if the wrapped input has received focus.
required boolean Represents the value of the FormControlUnstyled component's required prop.
value unknown The current value of the form control.

The following callbacks are also part of the returned object—they are meant to be used when creating custom inputs:

Name Type Description
onChange React.ChangeEvent => void Value change handler. Should be forwarded to the inner input.
onBlur () => void Focus change handler. Should be forwarded to the inner input.
onFocus () => void Focus change handler. Should be forwarded to the inner input.

Using FormControlUnstyled without reading context

In addition to providing a context, you can access the state of the form control by providing a function as a child of the FormControlUnstyled. The state will be provided as a parameter to this function.

<FormControlUnstyled defaultValue="" required>
  {({ filled, focused }: FormControlUnstyledState) => (
    <React.Fragment>
      <Input className={filled ? 'filled' : ''} />
      {filled && !focused && <OkMark></OkMark>}
    </React.Fragment>
  )}
</FormControlUnstyled>