dojox.form.manager._FormMixin

Status:Draft
Version:1.3 (trunk)
Project owner:Eugene Lazutkin
Available:since 1.3

Introduction

This class is the component of the form manager. It should be used together with _Mixin.

If the widget is based on <form> element, this mixin provides the enhanced functionality to reset and submit the form using the standard browser form submitting process. onreset and onsubmit events are processed automatically.

Methods and properties

This section describes all public methods and properties of the dojox.form.manager._FormMixin class.

General

Following public properties are defined to support standard form attributes: name, action, method, encType, accept-charset, accept, target. Please refer to the HTML DOM documentation for details on these standard attributes: HTMLFormElement.

reset

This method is used to reset the form. See HTMLFormElement for more details.

It goes over all controlled form widgets calling reset() on them (if it is defined), and calls reset() on the underlying <form> element, if there is one.

The method takes no parameters and returns the form manager itself for easy chaining.

Example:

fm.reset();

submit

This method is used to submit the form. See HTMLFormElement for more details.

The method works only if the top widget's node is <form> node. It calls onSubmit method, and if it returned anything but false (the identity check is used), it calls submit() on the underlying <form> node.

The method takes no parameters and returns nothing. If it is successful, the browser will submit the form, and navigate according to the server's response.

Example:

fm.submit();

isValid

This method validates all controlled and enabled form widgets by calling their isValid() method, if it was defined. If any form widget returns false, the method returns false too. Otherwise it returns true. The method takes no parameters.

Example:

if(fm.isValid()){
  // all individual form widgets were validated successfully
}else{
  // some form widget has failed the validation
}

Note: this method doesn't validate form nodes controlled by _NodeMixin or node attributes of the form manager widget. You should implement your own validation for them.

isForm

This is the Boolean property, which is set during the initialization of the form manager widget. If it is true, the root node of the widget is <form>. Otherwise it is false.

if(fm.isForm){
  // we are based on the actual <form> node
}else{
  // we are not based on the node --- use XHR
}

Event handlers

The mixin processes onreset and onsubmit events automatically re-routing them to callbacks that are meant to be overridden in the form manager widget by users.

onReset

This callback is called when onreset event was raised in any way. It should return false to stop reset from happening. The default implementation returns true.

The method takes one parameter: the event object.

Example:

fm.onReset = function(){ return false; }; // never allow to reset

onSubmit

This callback is called when onsubmit event was raised in any way. It should return false to stop submit from happening. The default implementation calculates onValid and returns its value. It prevents the form from submitting if any form widget was not valid.

The method takes one parameter: the event object.

Example:

fm.onSubmit = function(){ return false; }; // never allow to submit

Lifecycle

Lifecycle methods are part of every widget. They are used to initialize and destroy a widget. If you mix dojox.form.manager._FormMixin in your own widget, make sure that these methods are not overwritten. If you overwrite them, make sure to call this.inherited(arguments) at the appropriate place, so they can initialize/destroy the widget properly.

startup

This is the standard method of any widget. It is responsible for starting up the widget after it was created and the DOM was parsed. For more details, see dijit._Widget.

Tips

This mixin makes sense mostly for <form>-based form manager widgets. If your widget is not based on <form> the only useful method is isValid. Think carefully if you really need it. On the other hand including this mixin in the absence of <form> doesn't have adverse effects on the functionality.

In some cases it makes sense to base your form manager widget on <form> node even if you don't want to submit the form with the browser relying on XHR-like methods instead. Having <form> enables automatic processing of Enter key anywhere in the form as onsubmit event. Don't forget to override onSubmit method returning false to prevent the form from actual submission, and start I/O using alternative means.

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