So far the form only gets information from the user. What if there's a need to edit an existing model? The property [ngModel] exists just for that.
First, define a model as a new class.
app/user.model.ts
export class User {
constructor(
public email: string,
public password: string) {}
}In order to use it in the MyForm component, define an instance of the User class.
app/my-form.component.ts
// ...
import {User} from './user.model';
// ...
export class MyForm {
user: User;
// ...
constructor() {
this.user = new User('[email protected]', 'secretpass');
// ...
}
// ...
}With this instance, the property [ngModel] can be used in the template to bind the value of the field to the model.
app/my-form.component.html
<form ...>
<div>
<!-- ... -->
<input type="email" id="email" [ngFormControl]="email" [ngModel]="user.email">
<!-- ... -->
</div>
<div>
<!-- ... -->
<input type="password" id="password" [ngFormControl]="password" [ngModel]="user.password">
<!-- ... -->
</div>
<p>{{ user | json }}</p>
<!-- ... -->
</form>Notice that when changing the values of the forms, the debug information shown at the bottom of the form is not being updated accordingly. That's because the property binding [ngModel] implements one-way data binding. To close the circle, the component can be modified to update the model on submit.
app/my-form.component.ts
// ...
export class MyForm {
// ...
onSubmit() {
this.user.email = this.group.value.email;
this.user.password = this.group.value.password;
console.log('data sent to server', this.user);
}
}Using this approach we avoid Angular 1's two-way data binding approach. If we still need two-way data binding, we can combine the property syntax with the event syntax.
app/my-form.component.html
<form ...>
<div>
<!-- ... -->
<input type="email" id="email" [ngFormControl]="email" [(ngModel)]="user.email">
<!-- ... -->
</div>
<div>
<!-- ... -->
<input type="password" id="password" [ngFormControl]="password" [(ngModel)]="user.password">
<!-- ... -->
</div>
<!-- ... -->
</form>Now the model is updated any time the form is changed.
When dealing with a very long form, creating a variable for every field in the form can be tedious. Angular 2 provides an alternative syntax to creating a form using the FormBuilder.
app/my-form.component.ts
// ...
export class MyForm {
group: ControlGroup;
user: User
constructor(builder: FormBuilder) {
this.user = new User('[email protected]', 'secretpass');
this.group = builder.group({
email: ['',
Validators.compose([Validators.required, CustomValidators.emailFormat]),
CustomValidators.duplicated
],
password: ['',
Validators.compose([Validators.required, Validators.minLength(4)])
]
});
this.group.find('email').valueChanges.subscribe((value: string) => {
console.log('email', value);
});
this.group.find('password').valueChanges.subscribe((value: string) => {
console.log('password', value);
});
this.group.valueChanges.subscribe((value: any) => {
console.log('form', value);
});
}
//...
}Instead of assigning our controls to each key in the group method, we now pass an array where every element is a map of the arguments present in the Control constructor.
Because we no longer have access to every control in our template, we must resort to do the validation for each field in the form itself.
app/my-form.component.html
<form ...>
<div>
<!-- ... -->
<input type="email" id="email" [ngFormControl]="group.find('email')" [(ngModel)]="user.email">
<span *ngIf="group.find('email').pending">Checking duplication...</span>
<ul *ngIf="group.find('email').dirty && !group.find('email').valid">
<li *ngIf="group.hasError('required', 'email')">This field is required</li>
<li *ngIf="group.hasError('emailFormat', 'email')">This field needs to have at least 3 characters</li>
<li *ngIf="group.hasError('duplicated', 'email')">This value cannot be used</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<!-- ... -->
<input type="password" id="password" [ngFormControl]="group.find('password')" [(ngModel)]="user.password">
<ul *ngIf="group.find('password').dirty && !group.find('password').valid">
<li *ngIf="group.hasError('required', 'password')">This field is required</li>
<li *ngIf="group.hasError('minlength', 'password')">This field doesn't allow numbers</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- ... -->
</form>We are using two methods of our form component: find and hasError.
Let's get the instance of the Control we are using from the form and in this way we can do the same validations of state and errors as before.
In some docs you may find a
controlobject used instead of the methodfind, like this:group.controls['firstName']. We are avoiding this approach because it will only work when dealing with aControlGroupwhere every control is stored in an object. If we were working with aControlArray, this approach would not work because there's not a key to refer to each control. The methodfindis an abstraction that will take care of both situations and will get us the proper control back.