React Hook Form - A Complete Guide

#What is React Hook Form

Most applications have forms to collect data, depending on the use case, implementing forms can be pretty complex, especially when building enterprise-level applications that provide an intuitive and flawless user experience. As a developer, it is highly likely that you have stumbled across building forms in most of your projects. Of course, you can manage simple forms on your own but after a point, it becomes sensible to use a library that abstracts a lot of work involved in handling complex forms.

React Hook Form is one such library that helps to manage complex forms. It comes with great performance, is super lightweight, has zero dependencies, can be easily integrated with different React UI frameworks like Material, Antd, and provides an intuitive API and excellent developer experience.

#How To Use React Hook Form

To get started, install the library with npm i --save react-hook-form

Using it inside your component is super simple, import the useForm hook from the library

import { useForm } from "react-hook-form";

The useForm hook gives us access to many properties, for now, we will only use register and handleSubmit. Inside your functional component destructure them

const { register, handleSubmit } = useForm();

Register an input element with a variable name like this, this will make the value of input available for form validation and form submission.

<input
 className="border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md"
 placeholder="Name"
 {...register("name")}
 />

Then you can handle your submit your form this way, and can create an onSubmit method which will have access to the forms data.

<form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}>

Below is a complete example

import { useState } from "react";
import { useForm } from "react-hook-form";

export default function ReactHookFormMini() {
  const { register, handleSubmit } = useForm();
  const [data, setData] = useState("");
 
  const onSubmit = (data) => {
    setData(data)
  }

  return (
    <div className="w-full flex justify-center items-center bg-gray-900 p-8 border-r border-dashed">
      <div className="w-1/2 shadow-lg rounded-md bg-white p-8 flex flex-col" style={{height:'375px'}}>
        <h2 className="text-center font-medium text-2xl mb-4">
          React Hook Form Basic
        </h2>
        <form
          onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}
          className="flex flex-1 flex-col justify-evenly"
        >
          <input
            className="border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md"
            placeholder="Name"
            {...register("name")}
          />
          <button
            className=" flex justify-center p-2 rounded-md w-1/2 self-center bg-gray-900  text-white hover:bg-gray-800"
            type='submit'
          >
            <span>
              Submit
            </span>
          </button>
        </form>
        <div className='h-4'>
          <p> Data: {JSON.stringify(data)}</p>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
}

This is how it will look, we have used tailwind for the css, feel free to use your own CSS frameworks.

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#Adding Validations

Validations are part and parcel of almost every form, they’re an application’s first line of defense against unwanted data. Validations ensure that incorrect data doesn’t reach the backend servers and eventually the databases. Ideally in most software data is validated at every layer i.e the Frontend, Backend, and Database.

For large forms, it can become tedious and repetitive to manage validations for each and every field and their error states. React Hook Form provides excellent API options and also aligns with the existing HTML standard for form validation, here is the list of validation rules supported by the library:

required
- The input value is mandatory or not
min
- The minimum value that can be accepted
max
- The maximum value that can be accepted
minLength
- The minimum length of input that can be accepted
maxLength
- The minimum length of input that can be accepted
pattern
- A regex pattern to validate the input
validate- Any custom function to validate the input

A simple example on how to use these attributes

<input
 className="border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md"
 placeholder="Phone Number"
 {...register("phoneNumber", {
    minLength: 1,
    maxLength: 10,
 })}
 />

Also, you can pass error messages with the validation rule, this will make displaying errors very simple.

<input
 className="border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md"
 placeholder="Email"
 {...register("email", {
 pattern: {
   value: /^.*@hygraph.com$/,
   message: 'Email must end with hygraph.com'
 }
 })}
 />

You can get the error object from useFrom and then display the error message in the template.

const { formState: { errors } } = useForm();

<span className="text-sm text-red-700">
   {errors?.email?.message}
</span>

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#Schema Validation Libraries

React hook form also supports integration with well known schema validation libraries. You can use libraries like Zod, Joi, or Yup inside your forms along with React hook form. Let us check out an example with the Yup schema validation library.

First, we need to declare our form data schema as shown below

// ...  
const schema = yup  
  .object({  
    fullName: yup.string().required(),  
    age: yup.number().positive().integer().required(),  
  })  
  .required();  
// ...

Then we can import the yup resolver from yup, and pass it to the useForm method of React Hook Form.

import { yupResolver } from "@hookform/resolvers/yup";

// ...

const {  
  register,  
  handleSubmit,  
  formState: { errors },  
} = useForm({  
  resolver: yupResolver(schema),  
});

// ...

Here is a complete example

import * as yup from "yup";  
import { yupResolver } from "@hookform/resolvers/yup";  
import { useForm } from "react-hook-form";

const schema = yup  
  .object({  
    fullName: yup.string().required(),  
    age: yup.number().positive().integer().required(),  
  })  
  .required();

export default function YupExample() {  
  const {  
    register,  
    handleSubmit,  
    formState: { errors },  
  } = useForm({  
    resolver: yupResolver(schema),  
  });  
  const onSubmit = (data) => console.log(data);

  return (  
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}>  
      <input {...register("fullName")} />  
      <p>{errors.fullName?.message}</p>

      <input {...register("age")} />  
      <p>{errors.age?.message}</p>

      <input type="submit" />  
    </form>  
  );  
}

#Integrating with Other Components

It is possible that we have UI Frameworks already set up and are using UI components from that library, React Hook Form can integrate with those UI frameworks as well. In the below example you can find how to integrate React Hook Form with AntD’s input components.

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { Controller, useForm } from "react-hook-form";
import { Input, Checkbox, Slider } from "antd";


export default function RFHWithAntd() {
  const { control, handleSubmit } = useForm();
  const [data, setData] = useState({});
  const onSubmit = (data) => {
    setData(data)
  }
  return (
    <div className="w-full flex justify-center items-center bg-gray-900 p-8 border-r border-dashed">
      <div className="w-1/2 shadow-lg rounded-md bg-white p-8 flex flex-col" style={{ height: '375px' }}>
      <h2 className="text-center font-medium text-2xl mb-4">
          React Hook Form With AntD
        </h2>
        <form
          onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}
          className="flex flex-1 flex-col justify-evenly"
        >
          <Controller
            control={control}
            name="name"
            render={({ field }) => (
            <Input
             {...field}
             placeholder="Name"
            />
            )}
          />

          <div className="flex">
            <label>Is Developer?</label>
            <Controller
              control={control}
              name="isDeveloper"
              render={({ field: { value, onChange } }) => (
                <Checkbox
                  className="ml-4"
                  checked={value}
                  onChange={(e) => {
                    onChange(e.target.checked);
                  }}
                />
              )}
            /></div>


          <section>
            <label>Experience In Years</label>
            <Controller
              control={control}
              name="experience"
              render={({ field }) => <Slider {...field} />}
            />
          </section>

         
          <button
            className=" flex justify-center p-2 rounded-md w-1/2 
            self-center bg-gray-900  text-white hover:bg-gray-800"
            type='submit'
          >
            <span>
              Submit
            </span>
          </button>
        </form>
        <div className='h-4'>
          <p> Data: {JSON.stringify(data)}</p>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  )
};

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#React Hook Form Examples

Typescript

React hook form supports TypeScript which gives additional type safety to our code. We can define the types for our form data and pass it to React Hook Form as shown below

import { useForm } from "react-hook-form"

type FormData = {  
  firstName: string  
  age: number  
}

export default function TypeScriptExample() {  
  // ...  
  const {  
    register,  
    setValue,  
    handleSubmit,  
    formState: { errors },  
  } = useForm<FormData>()  
  const onSubmit = handleSubmit((data) => console.log(data))

  return (  
    // ...  
  )  
}

That's it, now React Hook Form is now aware how our form data looks and it will try to prevent any type violations. For example, if we add the code below in the markup of the Typescript form, it will show us a type error saying property name does not exist on type FormData

return (  
    // ...  
    {errors.name?.message}  
    // ...  
  )

Comparing Performance

We mentioned earlier that React Hook Form delivers great performance, one of the reasons for the same is how the library manages re-renders. Compared to any other library or an implementation of a Form in React from scratch, React Hook Form hardly performs any re-renders when values inside your form change, which is a great optimization to have out of the box. We can go through an example to establish this, we will build two forms with the same functionality. One with implementation from scratch and another with React Hook Form, then compare the re-renders for the same input.

Normal form

import React, { useState } from 'react';
let renderCount = 0

export default function NormalForm() {
  const [name, setName] = useState('');
  const [email, setEmail] = useState('');
  const [showFormData, setShowFormData] = useState(false)
  const onSubmit = (event) => {
    event.preventDefault()
    setShowFormData(true)
    console.log('Run Validations Manually, maintain & show errors on UI, if all good make API call.')
  }

  renderCount += 1
  return (
    <div className="w-1/2 flex justify-center items-center bg-gray-900 p-8">
      <div className="w-full shadow-lg rounded-md bg-white p-8 flex flex-col" style={{ height: '375px' }}>
        <h2 className="text-center font-medium text-2xl mb-4">
          Normal Form
        </h2>
        Render Count -- {renderCount}
        <form
          onSubmit={onSubmit}
          className="flex flex-1 flex-col justify-evenly"
        >
          <input
            className="border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md"
            placeholder="Name"
            value={name}
            onChange={(e) => { setName(e.target.value) }}
          />
          <input
            className="border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md"
            type="email"
            placeholder="Email"
            value={email}
            onChange={(e) => { setEmail(e.target.value) }}
          />
          <button
            className=" flex justify-center p-2 rounded-md 
            w-1/2 self-center bg-gray-900  text-white hover:bg-gray-800"
            type='submit'
          >
            <span>
              Submit
            </span>
          </button>
        </form>
        {

          <div className='h-4'>
            <p> Data:
              {
                showFormData ?
                  <span> {name} {email} </span>
                  : null
              }
            </p>
          </div>
        }
      </div>
    </div>
  );
}

React Hook Form

import { useState } from "react";
import { useForm } from "react-hook-form";
let renderCount = 0

export default function ReactHookForm() {
  const { register, handleSubmit } = useForm();
  const [data, setData] = useState("");

  const onSubmit = (data) => {
    setData(JSON.stringify(data))
  }

  renderCount += 1
  return (
    <div className="w-1/2 flex justify-center items-center bg-gray-900 p-8 border-r border-dashed">
      <div className="w-full shadow-lg rounded-md bg-white p-8 flex flex-col" style={{ height: '375px' }}>
        <h2 className="text-center font-medium text-2xl mb-4">
          React Hook Form
        </h2>
        Render Count -- {renderCount}
        <form
          onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}
          className="flex flex-1 flex-col justify-evenly"
        >
          <input
            className="border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md"
            placeholder="Name"
            {...register("name")}
          />
          <input
            className="border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md"
            placeholder="Email"
            {...register("email")}
          />
          <button
            className=" flex justify-center p-2 rounded-md
            w-1/2 self-center bg-gray-900  text-white hover:bg-gray-800"
            type='submit'
          >
            <span>
              Submit
            </span>
          </button>
        </form>
        <div className='h-4'>
          <p> Data: {data}</p>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
}

At the start. without any insertions in the form.

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After inserting the same values in the form and hitting submit.

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React Hook Form took 4 re-renders while the normal form took 58, the difference is substantial. Also, this is a very simple form with two fields, so you can imagine that the re-renders in a complex form will be even more.

Advanced Example

To strengthen our understanding, we can go one step further and explore the other available API options.
The useForm hook provides a formState property which gives us more details about the user’s interaction with our form.

isDirty: boolean value that denotes if the user interacted with the form
isValid: boolean value that denotes if the current form state is valid.
errors: an object that contains errors if any of the validations are failing.
isSubmitted: boolean value that denotes if the user has tried to submit the form at least once
touchedFields: an object which holds the touched fields.
dirtyFields: an object which holds the dirty fields.

The difference between dirty and touched fields is that If the user clicks on a text input, it’s marked as touched but not dirty, after that, if the user also enters any value inside the text input then only it is marked as dirty.

The useForm hook also provides a watch function, which can be used to watch on form inputs and display other fields dynamically. Dynamic forms are a common use case, where form fields are shown dynamically based on what a user enters in previous fields.

Here’s a complete advanced example showing the use of all the above properties.

import { useState } from 'react';
import { useForm } from 'react-hook-form';
let renderCount = 0

export default function ReactHookFormAdvanced() {
  const {
    register,
    handleSubmit,
    formState: { touchedFields, isDirty, isValid, dirtyFields, isSubmitted, errors },
    watch
  } = useForm();

  const [data, setData] = useState('');
  const watchIsDeveloper = watch('isDeveloper');
  renderCount += 1
  return (
    <div className='w-full flex justify-center items-center bg-gray-900 p-8'>
      <div className='w-2/3 shadow-lg rounded-md bg-white p-8 flex flex-col justify-start' style={{ height: '700px' }}>
        <h2 className='text-center font-medium text-2xl mb-4'>
          React Hook Form Advanced
        </h2>
        Render Count -- {renderCount}
        <form
          onSubmit={handleSubmit(setData)}
          className='flex flex-1 flex-col justify-evenly'
        >
          <input
            className='border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md'
            placeholder='Name'
            {...register('name')}
          />

          <input
            className='border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md'
            placeholder='Email'
            {...register('email', { required: 'Email is required.' })}
          />

          <input
            className='border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md'
            placeholder='Phone Number'
            {...register('phoneNumber')}
          />
          <div>
            <span className='mr-4'>
              Are you a developer?
            </span>
            <input type='checkbox' {...register('isDeveloper')} />
          </div>
          {
            watchIsDeveloper ?
              <div className='flex w-full '>
                <input
                  className='flex-1 border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md mr-2'
                  placeholder='Experience (Years)'
                  {...register('exp_years')} />
                <input
                  className='flex-1 border-2 outline-none p-2 rounded-md'
                  placeholder='Experience (Months)'
                  {...register('exp_months')} />
              </div>
              : null
          }

          <button
            className=' flex justify-center p-2 rounded-md
            w-1/2 self-center bg-gray-900  text-white hover:bg-gray-800'
            type='submit'
          >
            <span>
              Submit
            </span>
          </button>
        </form>

        <p className='w-4/5'> <strong> Data: </strong> {JSON.stringify(data)} </p>
        <p> <strong> Is Valid: </strong> {JSON.stringify(isValid)}</p>
        <p> <strong> Is Dirty : </strong> {JSON.stringify(isDirty)} </p>
        <p> <strong> Is Submited: </strong> {JSON.stringify(isSubmitted)}</p>
        <p> <strong> Errors: </strong> {JSON.stringify(errors?.email?.message)}</p>
        <p> <strong> Dirty Fields : </strong> {JSON.stringify(dirtyFields)} </p>
        <p> <strong> Touched Fields: </strong> {JSON.stringify(touchedFields)} </p>
        <p> <strong> Watching Is Developer: </strong> {JSON.stringify(watchIsDeveloper)}</p>

      </div>
    </div>

  );
}

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Blog Author

Aagam Vadecha

As a Software Engineer, my daily routine revolves around writing scalable applications with clean code & maintaining them. In my spare time, I love to explore software architecture patterns, write tech articles & watch thrillers!