[proposal] Rails-namespaced helpers about react-rails

[xionon]

@oguzbilgic for nested attributes, I have found it's almost always better to ignore your database model, and instead model your form as flat as possible.

As an example, assuming Person has_one Address, instead of doing this <input name="person[address][street_address]" />, just do <input name="person[street_address]" /> and figure it out on the server. For me, this has been true with and without React. I usually create an object that maps my REST-resource to the backend database models. That way, when the app grows and the backend modeling needs to change, it's much easier to change the way my REST-to-Database models work, rather than all the forms that interact with those models.

@eliotsykes sorry for missing your question. The form tag turned out to be very simple, so I never bothered making a PR for it. I posted a gist of my form helper. I never found a way to build Rails.FormErrorList that I really thought was re-usable, and the others are so trivial that adding them felt like it would just clutter the framework.

[atipugin]

I think it would be better to release it as a separate gem. Anyway, i totally up for it, as i had similar thoughts about Rails-specific components.

[eliotsykes]

@xionon I'd be interested in seeing any work-in-progress code for these helpers, they sound useful.

[oguzbilgic]

I am also working on something similar. But the real issue is input naming, and nested attributes! I would love to hear if you guys found a solution to this.

[danott]

This is an awesome idea. 👍

[badenkov]

I also have similar ideas, i posted its here https://github.com/badenkov/react_form_rails

[danott]

This may be a terrible idea... but for the server side, what about an API that looks similar to the familiar form_for Rails helper?

<%= react_form_for @comment, 'CommentForm' %>

This would exist for the purpose of passing all the props that a <Rails.form /> component may need. It may generate something like:

<div data-react-class="CommentForm" data-react-props="{ RailsForm: { action: '/comments', csrfToken: 'foo', etc: '...' }, object: { comment: 'properties', would: 'be here' }" />

In my initial thinking, the object key would have @comment.to_json. And if that isn't what you want, a third optional parameter could be passed, to explicitly state object props.

Then, on the component side, we can use Rails components to build forms in a familiar way, adding behavior as we need it.

var CommentForm = React.createClass({
  propTypes: {
    RailsForm: React.PropTypes.shape({
      action: React.PropTypes.string.isRequired,
      csrfToken: React.PropTypes.string.isRequired,
      isNewRecord: React.PropTypes.bool.isRequied,
      errors: React.PropTypes.arrayOf(React.PropTypes.object),
    }),
    object: React.PropTypes.object.isRequred,
  }, 

  render() {
    <Rails.form {...this.props.RailsForm}>
      <Rails.label attr="text" />
      <Rails.inputField attr="text" onChange={this.handleTextChange" />
    </Rails>
  },

  handleTextChange() {
    /* validate? */
  }
})

[rmosolgo]

This would be a cool project, if anyone gets it going, please send a PR to the "Related Projects" section!

https://github.com/reactjs/react-rails#related-projects