narin
commented
1 month ago Documenting pros/cons of either providing form components only or developing a form system below:
Form Components Only
Pros
- Flexibility – Devs can choose their own state management and validation libraries, allowing for tailored solutions
- Customization – Devs can choose to display error messaging and other layout elements in whatever way they want
- Simplicity – Maintaining individual form components is simpler and involves less overhead.
Cons
- Inconsistency – Different parts of the application might handle forms differently, leading to inconsistencies in validation, error handling, and state management.
- Repetition – Developers might end up writing repetitive code for handling common form functionalities like validation, error messages, and state management.
- Learning curve – New developers or contributors may need to understand multiple ways of handling forms within the same codebase, which can slow down onboarding and collaboration
Form System
Pros
- Consistency – A unified form system ensures that all forms across the application and all mobile apps handle validation, error messages, and state management in a consistent manner
- Productivity – Reduces the need for repetitive code, as common functionalities are handled by the form system. This can speed up development time and reduce the likelihood of bugs.
- User experience – Provides a consistent user experience across the applications
- Less Maintenance (consuming teams) – Centralized handling of form logic makes it easier to update and maintain. Bug fixes and feature improvements in the form system automatically propagate to all forms using it.
Cons
- More Maintenance (DS team) – Building and maintaining an entire form system is more work than components only. Could be treated like an entirely different project/library
- Inflexibility – End users may not like the system or require features that we don’t provide, and may have to rely on us for features and customization
After discussing in our touchpoint with @rtwell on 7/31, we decided we'll reach out to Matt Dingee for his thoughts. We also decided it might be best to start with the components only, and provide usage guidance in our docs instead of enforcing a form system.
Description
In the app, there is a FormWrapper component which often surrounds other form components. This FormWrapper provides additional functionality to handle validation, setting error states, maintaining a list of errors, displaying error messages, resetting errors, and handling save/submit. The FormWrapper also allows engineers to pass a set of props and render the form elements for them.
We should determine if we want to provide a similar type of FormWrapper component, or simply provide the form components themselves with an styling for error states. Including a FormWrapper type component would significantly increase the complexity and scope of providing a form, and venture into the territory of maintaining/providing a "form system".
Acceptance Criteria