README.md
YAAF (Yet Another Active Form) is a gem that let you create form objects in an easy and Rails friendly way. It makes use of `ActiveRecord` and `ActiveModel` features in order to provide you with a form object that behaves pretty much like a Rails model, and still be completely configurable.
We were going to name this gem `ActiveForm` to follow Rails naming conventions but given there are a lot of form object gems named like that we preferred to go with `YAAF`.
[](https://codeclimate.com/github/rootstrap/yaaf/maintainability)
[](https://codeclimate.com/github/rootstrap/yaaf/test_coverage)
## Table of Contents
- [Motivation](#motivation)
- [Why YAAF?](#why-yaaf)
- [Installation](#installation)
- [Usage](#usage)
- [Setting up a form object](#setting-up-a-form-object)
- [#initialize](#initialize)
- [#valid?](#valid?)
- [#invalid?](#invalid?)
- [#errors](#errors)
- [#save](#save)
- [#save!](#save!)
- [Validations](#validations)
- [Callbacks](#callbacks)
- [Sample app](#sample-app)
- [Links](#links)
- [Development](#development)
- [Contributing](#contributing)
- [License](#license)
- [Code of Conduct](#code-of-conduct)
- [Credits](#credits)
## Motivation
Form Objects is a design pattern that allows us to:
1. Keep views, models and controllers clean
2. Create/update multiple models at the same time
3. Keep business logic validations out of models
There are some other form objects gems but we felt none of them provided us all the features that we expected:
1. Form objects that behave like Rails models
2. Simple to use and to understand the implementation (no magic)
3. Easy to customize
4. Gem is well tested and maintained
For this reason we decided to build our own Form Object implementation. After several months in production without issues we decided to extract it into a gem to share it with the community.
If you want to learn more about Form Objects you can check out [these great articles](#links).
### Why YAAF?
- It is [71 lines long](https://github.com/rootstrap/yaaf/blob/master/lib/yaaf/form.rb#L71). As you can imagine, we did no magic in such a few lines of code, we just leveraged Rails modules in order to provide our form objects with a Rails-like behavior. You can review the code, it's easy to understand.
- It provides a similar API to `ActiveModel` models so you can treat them interchangeably.
- You can customize it 100%. We encourage you to have your own `ApplicationForm` which inherits from `YAAF::Form` and make the customizations you'd like for your app.
- It helps decoupling the frontend from the database. This is particularly important when using Rails as a JSON API with a frontend in React/Ember/Vue/Angular/you name it. If you were to use `accepts_nested_attributes_for` your frontend would need to know your database structure in order to build the request. With `YAAF` you can provide a the interface you think it's best.
- It easily supports nested models, collection of models and associated models. You have full control on their creation.
- It helps you keep your models, views and controllers thin by providing a better place where to put business logic. In the end, this will improve the quality of your codebase and make it easier to maintain and extend.
- It is an abstraction from production code. It has been working well for us, I'm confident it will work well for you too :)
## Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
```ruby
gem 'yaaf'
```
And then execute:
$ bundle install
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install yaaf
## Usage
In the following sections we explain some basic usage and the API provided by the gem. You can also find some recipes [here](https://rootstrap.github.io/yaaf).
### Setting up a form object
In order to use a `YAAF` form object, you need to inherit from `YAAF::Form` and define the `@models` of the form, for example:
```ruby
# app/forms/registration_form.rb
class RegistrationForm < YAAF::Form
attr_accessor :user_attributes
def initialize(attributes)
super(attributes)
@models = [user]
end
def user
@user ||= User.new(user_attributes)
end
end
```
By doing that you can work with your form object in your controller such as you'd do with a model.
```ruby
# app/controllers/registrations_controller.rb
class RegistrationsController < ApplicationController
def create
registration_form = RegistrationForm.new(user_attributes: user_params)
if registration_form.save
redirect_to registration_form.user
else
render :new
end
end
private
def user_params
params.require(:user).permit(:email, :password, :password_confirmation)
end
end
```
Form objects supports calls to [valid?](#valid?), [invalid?](#invalid?), [errors](#errors), [save](#save), [save!](#save!), such as any `ActiveModel` model. The return values match the corresponding `ActiveModel` methods.
When saving or validating a form object, it will automatically validate all its models and promote the error to the form object itself, so they are accessible to you directly from the form object.
Form objects can also define validations like:
```ruby
# app/forms/registration_form.rb
class RegistrationForm < YAAF::Form
validates :phone, presence: true
validate :a_custom_validation
# ...
def a_custom_validation
# ...
end
end
```
Validations can be skipped the same way as for `ActiveModel` models:
```ruby
# app/controllers/registrations_controller.rb
class RegistrationsController < ApplicationController
def create
registration_form = RegistrationForm.new(user_attributes: user_params)
registration_form.save!(validate: false)
end
private
def user_params
params.require(:user).permit(:email, :password, :password_confirmation)
end
end
```
Form objects support the saving of multiple models at the same time, to prevent leaving the system in a bad state all the models are saved within a DB transaction.
A good practice would be to create an empty `ApplicationForm` and make your form objects inherit from it. This way you have a centralized place to customize any `YAAF` default behavior you would like.
```ruby
class ApplicationForm < YAAF::Form
# Customized behavior
end
```
### #initialize
The `.new` method should be called with the arguments that the form object needs.
When initializing a `YAAF` form object, there are two things to keep in mind
1. You need to define the `@models` instance variables to be an array of all the models that you want to be validated/saved within the form object.
2. To leverage `ActiveModel`'s features, you can call `super` to automatically make the attributes be stored in instance variables. If you use it, make sure to also add `attr_accessor`s, otherwise `ActiveModel` will fail.
### #valid?
The `#valid?` method will perform both the form object validations and the models validations. It will return `true` or `false` and store the errors in the form object.
By default `YAAF` form objects will store model errors in the form object under the same key. For example if a model has an `email` attribute that had an error, the form object will provide an error under the `email` key (e.g. `form_object.errors[:email]`).
### #invalid?
The `#invalid?` method is exactly the same as the `.valid?` method but will return the opposite boolean value.
### #errors
The `#errors` method will return an `ActiveModel::Errors` object such as any other `ActiveModel` model.
### #save
The `#save` method will run validations. If it's invalid it will return `false`, otherwise it will save all the models within a DB transaction and return `true`.
Defined callbacks will be called in the following order:
- `before_validation`
- `after_validation`
- `before_save`
- `after_save`
- `after_commit/after_rollback`
Options:
- If `validate: false` is send as options to the `save` call, it will skip validations.
### #save!
The `#save!` method is exactly the same as the `.save` method, just that if it is invalid it will raise an exception.
### Validations
`YAAF` form objects support validations the same way as `ActiveModel` models. For example:
```ruby
class RegistrationForm < YAAF::Form
validates :email, presence: true
validate :some_custom_validation
# ...
end
```
### Callbacks
`YAAF` form objects support callbacks the same way as `ActiveModel` models. For example:
```ruby
class RegistrationForm < YAAF::Form
before_validation :normalize_attributes
after_commit :send_confirmation_email
# ...
end
```
Available callbacks are (listed in execution order):
- `before_validation`
- `after_validation`
- `before_save`
- `after_save`
- `after_commit/after_rollback`
## Sample app
You can find a sample app making use of the gem [here](https://yaaf-examples.herokuapp.com). Its code is also open source, and you can find it [here](https://github.com/rootstrap/yaaf-examples).
## Links
- [How to improve maintainability in Rails applications using patterns. Part I](https://www.rootstrap.com/blog/2020/02/14/how-to-improve-maintainability-in-rails-applications-using-patterns-part-i/)
- [7 Patterns to Refactor Fat ActiveRecord Models](https://codeclimate.com/blog/7-ways-to-decompose-fat-activerecord-models/)
- [ActiveModel Form Objects](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/activemodel-form-objects)
- [Form Objects Design Pattern](https://gorails.com/episodes/form-objects-design-pattern)
- [Form Object from Railscasts](https://makandracards.com/alexander-m/42271-form-object-from-railscasts)
- [Validating Form Objects](https://revs.runtime-revolution.com/validating-form-objects-8058fefc7b89)
- [Disciplined Rails: Form Object Techniques & Patterns — Part 1](https://medium.com/@jaryl/disciplined-rails-form-object-techniques-patterns-part-1-23cfffcaf429)
- [Complex form objects with Rails](https://www.codementor.io/@victor_hazbun/complex-form-objects-in-rails-qval6b8kt)
- [How to keep your controllers thin with form objects](https://ducktypelabs.com/how-to-keep-your-controllers-thin-with-form-objects)
## Development
After checking out the repo, run `bin/setup` to install dependencies. Then, run `bundle exec rspec` to run the tests. You can also run `bin/console` for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.
To install this gem onto your local machine, run `bundle exec rake install`. To release a new version, update the version number in `version.rb`, and then run `bundle exec rake release`, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the `.gem` file to [rubygems.org](https://rubygems.org).
## Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/rootstrap/yaaf. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the [code of conduct](https://github.com/rootstrap/yaaf/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md).
## License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the [MIT License](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).
## Code of Conduct
Everyone interacting in the YAAF project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the [code of conduct](https://github.com/rootstrap/yaaf/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md).
## Credits
YAAF is maintained by [Rootstrap](http://www.rootstrap.com) with the help of our [contributors](https://github.com/rootstrap/yaaf/contributors).
[](http://www.rootstrap.com)