Form.io: The Ultimate Form Building And Data Management Solution

Form.io is open source for developers who want to create the Form and Data management platform. Form.io provide us to create a dynamic form builder, and the form renderer feature.Form.io provides a drag-and-drop form builder, allowing us to build complex forms for enterprise applications quickly and easily.

These forms are then embedded directly into our application with a single line of code that dynamically renders the form and then hook that form up to the REST API provided by the Form.io API platform. The Form.io platform also offers numerous 3rd-party services that are fully integrated into the form-building process allowing us to extend the power and capability of our application while saving time and effort.

Form.io is a platform with several third-party interfaces to connect things like Google Sheets, Email, and Dropbox. There are several integrations that we have as well as your services; we have docker deployments where you can deploy this in your environment and hook it up to your database so that you can control all of your information.

How It Began?

The Form.io platform was created in 2015; before this timedevelopers used Server Rendered Applications . These applications leveraged monolithic technology stacks such as .NET, LAMP, Ruby on Rails, and Java; this all changed. However, web-based applications can now be rendered in the palm of your hand. Through this, web technologies quickly evolved to enable browser technologies to execute JavaScript in a very performant way.

This led to the next generation of the web, the Progressive Web. While this next generation of the web has been positive for several reasons, it did, however, create a gap in the web development industry where building data-driven form-based applications became a significant challenge. Form.io was created to fill this gap by creating a platform that bridges client-based applications with backend services through a common connective tissue found in every data-driven application Forms.

How It Works?

As we can see, developers use <form.io> to build their application forms and resources.

The forms are rendered dynamically within the application using JSON powdered form. Also, the schema of the form automatically generates and deploys an API in its environment.

JSON Powered Forms

• A form builder is used to create JSON Schema
• That JSON schema implements both the form and corresponding REST API.
• That schema is provided to the application Via API.

JSON-powered forms provide open sources form builder in which form builder generates a schema.

All glorifies JSON Builder, so by dragging and dropping components onto the forms, it builds a JSON object and does that on the front end entirely. It is never communicated to a backend server while you create a form. So if you are building a form, you construct a JSON object.

So that JSON schema implements both the form and corresponding API on the backend, and what form.io comes into play in our API platform is that with that schema, we know how to not only render the form on the front end with a form schema but we can also take the scene criteria to generate an API to support all of the data. 

Form.io’s Customer

Form.io has customers all over the world, ranging from early-stage disruptive startups to SMBs, to large enterprises like Amazon, in every major business vertical.

Included Libraries

From.io, a complete Serverless Data Management library, we can use the from.io component in angular application. These components are as follows.

• Form Renderer – The form renderer for angular
• Form Builder – The form renderer for angular
• Form Manager – A form management system
• Authentication – This allows an easy way to provide Form.io authentication into your application.
• Resource – A way to include the resources within your application with full CRUDI support (Create, Read, Update, Delete, Index)
• Data Table (Grid) – A way to render data within a table format, which includes pagination, sorting, etc.

Before you get started, though, it is important to install this library within your application.

Installation

To install this library, simply type the following within your application folder.

 npm install --save angular-formio

Once you do this, you can include this library within your application by adding the FormioModule to your project.

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { FormsModule } from '@angular/forms';
import { FormioModule, FormioAppConfig } from 'angular-formio';
import { AppRoutingModule } from './app-routing.module';
import { AppComponent } from './app.component';

@NgModule({

 declarations: [

   AppComponent

 ],

 imports: [

   BrowserModule,

   AppRoutingModule,

   FormsModule, FormioModule

 ],

 providers: [{provide: FormioAppConfig, useValue: {

   icons: 'fontawesome'

 }} ],

 bootstrap: [AppComponent]

})

export class AppModule { }

Form Builder

The form builder component can render a form builder into your application using the following syntax.

This can render the following form builder into your application.

Example

The following will render a form builder into your application and show all of the schemas of the form as it is built.

App.component.ts

import { Component, ElementRef, OnInit, ViewChild, EventEmitter } from '@angular/core';

import { FormioRefreshValue }  from 'angular-formio';

@Component({

 selector: 'app-root',

 templateUrl: './app.component.html',

 styleUrls: ['./app.component.scss']

})

export class AppComponent implements OnInit {

 @ViewChild('json', {static: true}) jsonElement?: ElementRef| any;

 @ViewChild('code', {static: true}) codeElement?: ElementRef;

 @ViewChild('formio') formio:any;

 public form: Object;

 public refreshForm: EventEmitter<FormioRefreshValue> = new EventEmitter();

 constructor() {

   this.form = {components: []};

 }

 ngOnInit(): void {

   this.form = {components: []};

   this.refreshForm = new EventEmitter();

 }

 saveForm() {

   this.jsonElement.nativeElement.innerHTML = '';

   this.jsonElement.nativeElement.appendChild(document.createTextNode(JSON.stringify(this.formio.form, null, 4)));

   this.refreshForm.emit({

     property: 'form',

     form: this.form

   });

 }}

app.component.html

<form-builder [form]="form"  #formio></form-builder>

<div><button (click)="saveForm()" class="btn btn-dark m-3 btn-lg float-right">Save Form</button></div>

<hr/>

<h3 class="text-center text-muted">As JSON Schema</h3>

<div class="well jsonviewer">

 <pre id="json"><code class="language-json" #json></code></pre>

</div>

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