SmartStepper: A State Machine-Driven Multi-Step Form Component for React

Introduction

SmartStepper is a powerful React component that simplifies the creation of multi-step forms with state management, validation, and a flexible UI approach. It utilizes a state machine concept to manage step transitions, ensuring a smooth and controlled user experience.

Key Features

• State Machine for Step Management:
  • Leverages a state machine to track the current step, enabling efficient navigation between steps.
  • Transitions are controlled and predictable, preventing unexpected behavior.
• Nested Steps:
  • Supports nested step structures, allowing for complex and multi-layered forms.
  • Provides clear hierarchy and organization for intricate form flows.
• Separation of View and UI Customization:
  • Encourages separation between step logic and UI rendering.
  • Step components define their content, while the stepper handles transitions and context.
  • Allows for custom UI components within each step for a tailored user experience.
• Navigation with useSmartStepper Context:
  • Provides a useSmartStepper hook for step components to access navigation methods:
    • navigateToNextStep: Moves the stepper to the next step in the sequence.
    • navigateToPreviousStep: Moves the stepper to the previous step in the history.
    • navigateToPreviousStepWithTargetStep: Navigates to a specific step within the history stack.
  • This context-based approach promotes clean communication between steps and the stepper.
• Validation Integration with React Hook Form:
  • Integrates seamlessly with react-hook-form for field-level validation within each step.
  • Utilizes Yup or other schema libraries for defining validation rules.
  • Triggers validation before advancing to the next step, ensuring data integrity.
• Unregistering Fields on Step Backtracking:
  • Automatically unregisters form fields when navigating to a previous step.
  • Prevents stale data from persisting and affecting validation in subsequent steps.
  • Maintains a clean form state and improves performance.

Installation

npm install smartstepper

Basic Usage

1. Import necessary components:

   import { SmartStepper, TSmartStepperSchema } from 'smartstepper';
   import * as Yup from 'yup'; // Or your preferred schema library
   import Step1 from './Step1';
   import Step2 from './Step2';
   // ... import other step components

2. Define your step schema:

   const validationSchema = Yup.object().shape({
       firstName: Yup.string().required('First name is required'),
       lastName: Yup.string().required('Last name is required'),
   });
   
   const stepsSchema: TSmartStepperSchema<keyof InferType<typeof validationSchema>> = [
       {
           stepName: 'step1',
           fieldsForValidation: ['firstName', 'lastName'],
           component: <Step1 />,
       },
       // ... define other steps
   ];

3. Create your form component:

   const MyForm = () => {
     const onSubmit = (data) => {
       // Handle form submission with validated data
       console.log('Form submitted:', data);
     };
   
     return (
       <SmartStepper
         onSubmit={onSubmit}
         resolver={yupResolver(validationSchema)} // Or your validation resolver
         // ... other SmartStepper props
       >
         {stepsSchema.map((step) => (
           <SmartStepper.Step key={step.stepName} stepName={step.stepName} fieldsForValidation={step.fieldsForValidation}>
             {step.component}
           </SmartStepper.Step>
         ))}
       </SmartStepper>
     );
   };
   
   export default MyForm;

Advanced Features

• Customizing UI: You can completely customize the UI of each step by creating your own step components that render the desired content. The stepper itself handles state management and navigation, allowing you to focus on building step-specific UI elements.
• Nested Steps: To create nested step structures, simply render SmartStepper.Step components within other step components. This enables you to organize complex forms with hierarchical relationships between steps.
• Unregistering Fields: SmartStepper automatically unregisters form fields when navigating to a previous step. This prevents issues with stale data.

SmartStepper Context and React Hook Form Integration

The SmartStepper component utilizes React Context to provide methods and form state to child components (steps) for interaction with the stepper functionality. Here's a breakdown of the context values and their relation to React Hook Form integration:

Function	Description
navigateToNextStep	Triggers navigation to the next step in the sequence.
navigateToPreviousStep	Triggers navigation to the previous step in the history stack.
navigateToPreviousStepWithTargetStep	Allows navigation to a specific target step within the history stack.
registerStepperFields	React Hook Form integration: A wrapper around useForm().register for registering form fields for validation.
getStepperFieldValues	React Hook Form integration: A wrapper around useForm().getValues for retrieving current values of form fields.
setStepperFieldValues	React Hook Form integration: A wrapper around useForm().setValue for updating specific form field values.
stepperFieldResetter	React Hook Form integration: A wrapper around useForm().reset for resetting the entire form state.
canNavigateToNextStep	React Hook Form integration: Triggers validation for the current step's fields, returns a Promise resolving to true if validation passes.
control	React Hook Form integration: The control object provided by useForm, allowing additional features within steps.

By effectively utilizing these context values, step components can interact with the form state, trigger validation, navigate between steps, and manage field values seamlessly within the SmartStepper framework.