I would recommend Cx to anyone building complex forms. It's one package that covers all common problems related to forms - validation, data-binding, multi-value lookup fields, horizontal form layout, theming etc.
I love Phoenix but creating form on that framework feels needlessly complex.
Formex library is outdated and doesn't seem to work on Phoenix 1.4 but it makes it so much better to create form.
With Phoenix form library you have to add code in several files (schema, context, controller, view, and template). I can never remember all of it correctly so I have to refer to pragprog text book all the time. Formex require less.
I don't believe this is some sort of a deal breaker but it is important enough. There are tons of web app require forms CRUD operations admin like stuff to insert data via web.
I think the form abstraction is one of the better versions of it that I've seen in any of the web frameworks I've worked with. It's simple and elegant for most forms, and can even handle complicated ones (multipart forms, file attachments, complex validation scenarios, etc.) reasonably well.
on a really fundamental level working with complicated forms is just a complicated thing to do, no matter what kind of technology you're doing it with.
Cool stuff. If you are interested in doing multipage forms and need something that already has a form editor UI, check out the open source <tangy-form> and <tangy-form-editor> web components. Disclaimer, I'm a contributor to those projects.
This is interesting. Forms are somewhat pain always. Formspree is pretty good from my perspective, but for more simple use cases. Have to keep in mind that Keenforms is out there as well!
If you're looking for something in between, where you can utilize those front-end dev skills but still setup things extremely quickly, take a look at Form Gadget - https://www.formgadget.com/
It's a Form Builder tool that also offers a list of integrations, and is built with developers in mind.
Also feel free to reach out to me for information.
I didn't really look too closely at this library, but I do have a need for some heavy form processing (not so much validation) on a new project I am working on. Got any recommendations?
Exactly. Things are just complex, and who wants to wire up a form library from scratch? All of the tools out there now (assuming you know which to choose) have made our lives easier, and (vastly) less bug ridden, then ever before. It's hard to know what to choose, but the domain itself is necessarily complicated.
The first is the UI - the design, logic, etc. Any reasonable form builder will give you this.
The bigger issue is the deliverability aspect. This to me is the killer. Having to setup all the stuff around email deliverability is a horror - SPF, DKIM, DMARC - then monitor. It's awful, and it's especially awful if you're doing it on behalf of multiple clients.
https://cx.codaxy.com/starter/admin/orders/1
Disclaimer: I'm the author.
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