Appendix - Form in React

This section will be covered if we have additional time during the workshop.

Allow User to Create Movie

It would be nice if our users can create a movie themselves.

Prerequisite: API Service for Create Movie

Before you can allow user to create movie, first of all the backend API Service must be able to support that.

Luckily our movies API support that. To able to create a movie, install this Restlet Client, which is a Chrome extension to allow you to make API calls.

After the extension is installed,

1. open the extension by clicking the icon
2. select “POST” in the METHOD dropdown.
3. enter the following URL in the URL bar:

   https://react-intro-movies.herokuapp.com/movies
   

4. add the following content in the BODY field (change it to your favourite movie):

   {
     "name": "More Than Blue",
     "releaseDate": "2018-12-27"
   }
   

5. click send

Now when you load your app, you should be see your movie is added.

Add Ajax Call Function to Make the POST Request

Now that we know the actual AJAX call works by using tools, let’s proceed to do that with our code.

Create a createMovie function in api.js that will make the request

export const createMovie = (movie) =>
  axios.post('https://react-intro-movies.herokuapp.com/movies', movie).then((res) => res.data);

• axios allows you to makes API call with specific method, e.g. get, post, put etc., corresponding to our REST call methods.
• the second parameter of axios.post is the body of the data that you want to submit.

Create Form Component

Now that we have function to make the API call, let’s create the form component.

Add a file movie-form.js with the following content:

import * as React from 'react';
import { createMovie } from './api';

class MovieForm extends React.Component {
  state = {
    name: '',
    releaseDate: '',
  };

  handleInputChange = (ev) => {
    const { name, value } = ev.target;
    this.setState({
      [name]: value,
    });
  };

  handleSubmit = (ev) => {
    ev.preventDefault();
    createMovie(this.state);
  };

  render() {
    return (
      <div className="movie-form">
        <form onSubmit={this.handleSubmit}>
          <legend>Create Movie</legend>
          <div className="field">
            <label htmlFor="name" className="label">
              Name
            </label>
            <input
              className="input"
              value={this.state.name}
              id="name"
              name="name"
              onChange={this.handleInputChange}
              required
            />
          </div>
          <div className="field">
            <label htmlFor="releaseDate" className="label">
              Release Date
            </label>
            <input
              className="input"
              value={this.state.releaseDate}
              id="releaseDate"
              name="releaseDate"
              type="date"
              onChange={this.handleInputChange}
              required
            />
          </div>
          <div className="button-container">
            <button type="submit" className="submit-button">
              Create
            </button>
          </div>
        </form>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default MovieForm;

• we initialize the state with the values for the form.
• we define a handleInputChange method, which will be passed to onChange props of the input element.
  • This method will extract the value and the name of the input when you make any change to the input value. We use the name and the value to setState.
  • Take note of the [name], which means name should be evaluated to its value. Without the [], the setState call will always the value of name instead of depending on the name properties of the input.
• we define a handleSubmit method, which will be passed to onSubmit props of the form element. When form is submitted, we will call createForm with the state. We call event.preventDefault because by default form submission will cause a page refresh, and we doesn’t want that.

Now try to use the form, you can see the page is making the AJAX call, and after you refresh the page, the new movie will be there!

Refresh Movie List after Submission

To Be Continued

Error Handling for Form Submission

To Be Continued