af

Auto Form ("af") is a way of generating standards/WCAG compliant HTML forms based on an Ecto Schema.

Usage

Add autoform to your mix.exs

defp deps do
    [
      {:autoform, "~> 0.1.0"}
    ]
  end

Autoform can be used from either a Phoenix View, or Phoenix Controller.

You'll need to add

use Autoform

to the top of the module you want to use it in.

You'll be able to call either render_autoform/4 or custom_render_autoform/4 in the controller, or the template that corresponds to the view.

Call render_autoform in your controller with:

render_autoform(conn, :update, User, assigns: [user: get_user_from_db()])

or in your template:

<%= render_autoform(@conn, :create, User, assigns: [changeset: @changeset)], exclude: :date_of_birth %>

custom_render_autoform is called in a very similar way, but can be given extra arguments which will change the generated form.

An example of this in a template:

<%= custom_render_autoform(@conn, :create, [{User, custom_labels: %{date_of_birth: "DOB"}, input_first: [:date_of_birth]}], assigns: [changeset: @changeset)] %>

This will now render the form with a custom label for the date_of_birth input field.

Arguments

render_autoform(conn, action, schema, options)

• conn : Your Phoenix Plug.Conn

• action : Either :update or :create. This will be used to create the endpoint for your form.

• schema : Your Ecto schema

• options : A list of options you can use to customise your forms.

  • :assigns - The assigns for the form template, for example a changeset for update forms. Will default to empty list
  • :exclude - A list of any fields in your schema you don't want to display on the form
  • :update_field - The field from your schema you want to use in your update path (/users/some-id), defaults to id
  • :assoc_query - An ecto query you want to use when loading your associations

custom_render_autoform(conn, action, [{schema, opts}], options)

• conn : Your Phoenix Plug.Conn

• action : Either :update or :create. This will be used to create the endpoint for your form.

• list {schema, opts} : A list of tuples which contain your Ecto schemas and the options for the form.

  • opts include:
    • :custom_labels - A map with a key of the field from your schema and a value of text you would like to label the input with.
    • :input_first - A list of fields where you would like to display the label followed by the input.

• options : A list of options you can use to customise your forms.

  • :assigns - The assigns for the form template, for example a changeset for update forms. Will default to empty list
  • :exclude - A list of any fields in your schema you don't want to display on the form
  • :update_field - The field from your schema you want to use in your update path (/users/some-id), defaults to id
  • :assoc_query - An ecto query you want to use when loading your associations

Associations

:many_to_many associations are rendered as checkboxes.

:belongs_to associations are rendered as a select element.

If you don't want the associations to be rendered in your form, you can add them to your exclude list (see options above).

If you are using the custom_render_autoform function and one of the schemas you pass in is an association of the changeset's schema, it will be rendered within an inputs_for call, so your changes and any errors will be correctly rendered in the form.

Fields

This module can be used in conjuction with https://github.com/dwyl/fields.

If you use one of these Fields in your schema, and that field has an input_type/0 callback. The result of that callback will be the input type that is rendered in your form.

For example, the field Fields.DescriptionPlaintextUnlimited returns :textarea from its input_type function, so autoform will render a textarea using Phoenix.HTML.Form.textarea/3