alfresco-ng2-components/docs/process-services/components/form.component.md

Title, Added, Status, Last reviewed

Title	Added	Status	Last reviewed
Form component	v2.0.0	Active	2019-01-16

Form component

Shows a Form from APS

(See it live: Form Quickstart)

Contents

• Basic Usage
  • Transclusions
• Class members
  • Properties
  • Events
• Details
  • Displaying a form
  • Controlling outcome execution behaviour
  • Field Validators
  • Common scenarios
  • Alfresco Repositories APS configuration
• See also

Basic Usage

<adf-form 
    [taskId]="taskId">
</adf-form>

Transclusions

Any content in the body of <adf-form> will be shown when no form definition is found:

<adf-form .... >

    <div empty-form >
        <h2>Empty form</h2>
    </div>

</adf-form>

Class members

Properties

Name	Type	Default value	Description
data	FormValues		Custom form values map to be used with the rendered form.
disableCompleteButton	boolean	false	If true then the Complete outcome button is shown but it will be disabled.
disableSaveButton	boolean	false	If true then the Save outcome button is shown but will be disabled.
disableStartProcessButton	boolean	false	If true then the Start Process outcome button is shown but it will be disabled.
fieldValidators	FormFieldValidator[]		Contains a list of form field validator instances.
form	FormModel		Underlying form model instance.
formId	number		The id of the form definition to load and display with custom values.
formName	string		Name of the form definition to load and display with custom values.
nameNode	string		Name to assign to the new node where the metadata are stored.
nodeId	string		Content Services node ID for the form metadata.
path	string		Path of the folder where the metadata will be stored.
readOnly	boolean	false	Toggle readonly state of the form. Forces all form widgets to render as readonly if enabled.
saveMetadata	boolean	false	Toggle saving of form metadata.
showCompleteButton	boolean	true	Toggle rendering of the Complete outcome button.
showRefreshButton	boolean	true	Toggle rendering of the Refresh button.
showSaveButton	boolean	true	Toggle rendering of the Save outcome button.
showTitle	boolean	true	Toggle rendering of the form title.
showValidationIcon	boolean	true	Toggle rendering of the validation icon next to the form title.
taskId	string		Task id to fetch corresponding form and values.

Events

Name	Type	Description
error	EventEmitter<any>	Emitted when any error occurs.
executeOutcome	EventEmitter<FormOutcomeEvent>	Emitted when any outcome is executed. Default behaviour can be prevented via event.preventDefault().
formCompleted	EventEmitter<FormModel>	Emitted when the form is submitted with the Complete outcome.
formContentClicked	EventEmitter<ContentLinkModel>	Emitted when form content is clicked.
formDataRefreshed	EventEmitter<FormModel>	Emitted when form values are refreshed due to a data property change.
formError	EventEmitter<FormFieldModel[]>	Emitted when the supplied form values have a validation error.
formLoaded	EventEmitter<FormModel>	Emitted when the form is loaded or reloaded.
formSaved	EventEmitter<FormModel>	Emitted when the form is submitted with the Save or custom outcomes.

Details

All formXXX events receive a FormModel instance as their argument:

MyView.component.html

<adf-form
    [taskId]="selectedTask?.id"
    (formSaved)="onFormSaved($event)">
</adf-form>

MyView.component.ts

onFormSaved(form: FormModel) {
    console.log(form);
}

Displaying a form

There are various ways to display a form. The common scenarios are detailed below.

Displaying a form instance by task id

<adf-form 
    [taskId]="selectedTask?.id">
</adf-form>

For an existing Task both the form and its values will be fetched and displayed.

Displaying a form definition by form id

<adf-form 
    [formId]="selectedFormDefinition?.id"
    [data]="customData">
</adf-form>

In this case, only the form definition will be fetched.

Displaying a form definition by form name

<adf-form 
    [formName]="selectedFormDefinition?.name"
    [data]="customData">
</adf-form>

Displaying a form definition by ACS nodeId

<adf-form 
    [nodeId]="'e280be3a-6584-45a1-8bb5-89bfe070262e'">
</adf-form>

Here, the node metadata is shown in an APS form. If there is no form defined in APS for the type of node being used then APS will automatically create a new form.

Displaying a form definition by form name, storing the form fields as metadata

<adf-form 
    [formName]="'activitiForms:patientFolder'"
    [saveMetadata]="true"
    [path]="'/Sites/swsdp/documentLibrary'"
    [nameNode]="'test'">
</adf-form>

The nameNode parameter is optional.

Displaying a form definition by ECM nodeId

<adf-form 
    [nodeId]="'e280be3a-6584-45a1-8bb5-89bfe070262e'"
    [saveMetadata]="true"
    [path]="'/Sites/swsdp/documentLibrary'"
    [nameNode]="'test'">
</adf-form>

Here, the node metadata is shown in an APS Form with the form fields themselves saved as metadata. The nameNode parameter is optional.

Controlling outcome execution behaviour

In unusual circumstances, you may need to take complete control of form outcome execution. You can do this by implementing the executeOutcome event, which is emitted for both system outcomes and custom ones.

Note that by default, the code in your executeOutcome handler is executed before the default behavior but you can switch the default behavior off using event.preventDefault(). You might want to do this, for example, to provide custom form validation or to show a summary of the form validation before it is submitted.

MyView.component.html

<adf-form
    [taskId]="selectedTask?.id"
    executeOutcome="validateForm($event)">
</adf-form>

MyView.component.ts

import { FormOutcomeEvent } from '@alfresco/adf-core';

export class MyView {

    validateForm(event: FormOutcomeEvent) {
        let outcome = event.outcome;

        // you can also get additional properties of outcomes
        // if you defined them within outcome definition

        if (outcome) {
            let form = outcome.form;
            if (form) {
                // check/update the form here
                event.preventDefault();
            }
        }
    }

}

There are two other functions that can be very useful when you need to control form outcomes:

• saveTaskForm() - Saves the current form
• completeTaskForm(outcome?: string) Saves and completes the form with a given outcome name

Field Validators

You can supply a set of validator objects to the form using the fieldValidators property. Each validator implements a check for a particular type of data (eg, a date validator might check that the date in the field falls between 1980 and 2017). ADF supplies a standard set of validators that handle most common cases but you can also implement your own custom validators to replace or extend the set. See the Form Field Validator interface for full details and examples.

Common scenarios

Rendering a form using form definition JSON

See the demo-form file for an example of form definition JSON.

The component below (with the JSON assigned to the formDefinitionJSON property), shows how a form definition is rendered:

@Component({
    selector: 'sample-form',
    template: `<div class="form-container">
                    <adf-form
                        [form]="form">
                    </adf-form>
                </div>`
})
export class SampleFormComponent implements OnInit {

    form: FormModel;
    formDefinitionJSON: any;

    constructor(private formService: FormService) {
    }

    ngOnInit() {        
        this.form = this.formService.parseForm(this.formDefinitionJSON);
    }
}

Changing a field value based on another field

A common scenario is to set the contents of one form field based on the value of another. You could use this, say, to provide two alternative ways of entering the same information or to set up default values that can be edited.

You can implement this in ADF using the formFieldValueChanged event of the Form service. For example, if you had a form with a dropdown widget (id: type) and a multiline text (id:description), you could synchronize their values as follows:

formService.formFieldValueChanged.subscribe((e: FormFieldEvent) => {
    if (e.field.id === 'type') {
        const fields: FormFieldModel[] = e.form.getFormFields();
        const description = fields.find(f => f.id === 'description');
        if (description != null) {
            console.log(description);
            description.value = 'Type set to ' + e.field.value;
        }
    }
});

The code shown above subscribes to the formFieldValueChanged event to check whether an event is emitted for the type widget. Then it finds the description widget and assigns some text to its value property.

The result should look like the following:

Responding to all form events

Subscribe to the formEvents event of the Form service to get notification of all form events:

formService.formEvents.subscribe((event: Event) => {
  console.log('Event fired:' + event.type);
  console.log('Event Target:' + event.target);
});

Customizing the styles of form outcome buttons

You can use normal CSS selectors to style the outcome buttons of your form. Every outcome has an CSS id value following a simple pattern:

  adf-form-OUTCOME_NAME

In the CSS, you can target any outcome ID and change the style as in this example:

#adf-form-complete {
    background-color: blue !important;
    color: white;
}


#adf-form-save {
    background-color: green !important;
    color: white;
}

#adf-form-customoutcome {
    background-color: yellow !important;
    color: white;
}

Alfresco Repositories APS configuration

APS allows you to configure where to store files and folders in your on-site Alfresco repositories.

If you have your repositories configured like this, you can use the attach file/folder form widget to get a file from those repositories and attach it to the Form.

Note: your repositories could be configured to be on different servers from the one where your front-end is deployed. Make sure you are using the right Proxy or configuration, otherwise you will get a cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) error.

Also, don't forget to set the providers property to ALL in the app.config.json login configuration:

"providers": "ALL",

See also

• Form Field Validator interface
• Extensibility
• Form rendering service
• Form field model
• Form service