What does the component do?

The form field is a wrapper that ensures the standardised display and function of form components such as input (text, date, time), select and textarea.

When should the component be used?

• Whenever an input, select or textarea is used.
• To ensure consistent design and alignment of form input components.

Rules

• The use of form elements without a form field is not recommended. Should it be necessary for reasons, the presentation must be respected and must be guaranteed by the website or application.

Playground

The <sbb-form-field> component is intended to be used as a form input wrapper with label and errors.

<sbb-form-field>
  <label>Example</label>
  <input />
</sbb-form-field>

<sbb-form-field>
  <label>Example</label>
  <input required />
  <sbb-error>This field is required!</sbb-error>
</sbb-form-field>

In this document, "form field" refers to the wrapper component <sbb-form-field> and
"form field control" refers to the component that the <sbb-form-field> is wrapping
(e.g., the input, select, etc.)

The following components are designed to work inside a <sbb-form-field>:

• <input>
• <select>
• <textarea>
• sbb-datepicker and its associated components
• sbb-select
• sbb-slider
• sbb-time-input
• sbb-autocomplete

Slots

Label

Use a <label> element to provide a label for a form input. The
<sbb-form-field> will automatically configure the reference between label and input.

It's possible to use the floatingLabel property to display the label inside the input.
When using it and setting the value programmatically to empty or from empty to a specific value,
it's mandatory to call the reset() method of the <sbb-form-field> to update the state of the floating label.

<sbb-form-field>
  <label>Example</label>
  <input />
</sbb-form-field>

Error messages

Error messages can be shown under the form field by adding <sbb-error> elements inside the form field.
The component will automatically assign them to the slot='error'.

<sbb-form-field floating-label>
  <label>Example</label>
  <input required />
  <sbb-error>This field is required!</sbb-error>
</sbb-form-field>

In order to avoid the layout from "jumping" when an error is shown, the option of setting error-space="reserve"
on the <sbb-form-field> will reserve space for a single line of an error message.

It is also possible to provide a custom icon to the <sbb-error> component via the icon slot:

<sbb-error>
  <sbb-icon name="pie-small" slot="icon"></sbb-icon>
  This is a required field.
</sbb-error>

Prefix & Suffix

It is possible to add content as a prefix or suffix in a <sbb-form-field>.
This can be done via the prefix and suffix slots.

<sbb-form-field>
  <label>Example</label>
  <sbb-icon slot="prefix" name="pie-small"></sbb-icon>
  <input />
  <sbb-icon slot="suffix" name="circle-information-small"></sbb-icon>
</sbb-form-field>

It's also possible to slot an icon-only button using the sbb-mini-button.
Please note that only this component is correctly supported when slotting buttons in negative mode.

<sbb-form-field>
  <label>Example</label>
  <input />
  <sbb-mini-button slot="suffix" icon-name="pen-small"></sbb-mini-button>
</sbb-form-field>

Some components, like the sbb-form-field-clear or the
sbb-slider, when used within the form field, will automatically occupy
one or both of these slots.
Please refer to their documentation for more details.

Clear Button

The <sbb-form-field-clear> component can be used to provide the possibility to display a button
which can clear the input value.

<sbb-form-field>
  <label>Label</label>
  <input type="text" placeholder="Input placeholder" value="Input value" />
  <sbb-form-field-clear></sbb-form-field-clear>
</sbb-form-field>

Note: it currently works with simple inputs and does not support, for example, select inputs.

Style

The component has a size property, which accepts three different values: s, m (default) and l.

<sbb-form-field size="s">
  <label>Example</label>
  <input />
</sbb-form-field>

<sbb-form-field size="l">
  <label>Example</label>
  <input required />
  <sbb-error>This field is required!</sbb-error>
</sbb-form-field>

By default, the component has a defined width and min-width. However, this behavior can be overridden by setting
the width property to collapse: in this way the component adapts its width to the inner slotted input component.
This is useful, for example, for the sbb-time-input component.
However, as the width-styles are exposed to the host,
it's possible to apply any desired width by setting just the width and min-width CSS properties.

<sbb-form-field width="collapse">
  <sbb-time-input value="13:30"></sbb-time-input>
</sbb-form-field>

Reflected state from input

The form field reflects certain states as custom states. This includes focus, disabled,
readonly, empty, has-error, has-popup-open and input-type-{tag name of the input}.

This can be targeted via CSS via the :state() pseudo-class:

sbb-form-field:state(disabled) {
  // Additional rules to apply when the input of the form field is disabled
}

Error state

The form field is displayed in an error state when an input element has been interacted with
and is in an error state. This checks both for the native validity state (which can be set
on <input>, <select> and <textarea> via validation attributes like required or
via the setCustomValidity(message) method) and for the Angular Forms state classes.

If you want to manually set the error state, you can add the sbb-invalid CSS class
to the input element.

If you want to directly show the error state without having had an interaction, you can use the
sbb-show-errors class on an ancestor (e.g. <form>).

Custom form control

The form field looks for native form controls (i.e. <input>, <select>
or <textarea>) or form associated custom elements. If nothing matches,
it assumes the first slotted element is the form control (excluding
<label> and elements with a slot="*" attribute).

Once connected, the form field primarily observes the attributes readonly,
disabled, form, class and listens to the input and invalid event
on the connected form control to update the internal state accordingly.

If you want to use a custom form control that does not follow that convention
(e.g. Angular), you need to provide an integration layer, which is defined
as the SbbFormFieldElementControl interface.

To initially connect the custom form control and to update the state, whenever
one of the property of the interface changes, the SbbFormFieldControlEvent
needs to be dispatched on the <sbb-form-field> instance.

Angular

In @sbb-esta/lyne-angular we have an adaption layer to easily define a custom form control.
Please consume the documentation of @sbb-esta/lyne-angular for an example.

Example

If you are using another framework, or you are using an existing library
that you need to connect, you can write the integration yourself.

import {
  SbbFormFieldElementControl,
  SbbFormFieldControlEvent,
} from '@sbb-esta/lyne-elements/form-field.js';

const formField = document.getElementsByTagName('sbb-form-field')[0];
const myControl = document.getElementsByTagName('my-form-control')[0];

function onFormControlChange(): void {
  formField.dispatchEvent(
    new SbbFormFieldControlEvent({
      id: myControl.id,
      disabled: myControl.disabled,
      empty: myControl.isEmpty,
      readOnly: myControl.readOnly,
      onContainerClick: (): void => myControl.focus(),
    }),
  );
}

myControl.addEventListener('custom-change-event', onFormControlChange);

Accessibility

By itself, the <sbb-form-field> does not apply any additional accessibility treatment to a form
element. However, several of the form field's optional features interact with the form element
contained within the form field.

When you provide a label, the <sbb-form-field> automatically
associates this label with the form element using the for
attribute to reference the control's ID.
When using a non-native form element, the aria-labelledby is used to connect the
form element with the label, by setting an id on the label and referencing this id in the
aria-labelledby attribute placed on the form element.
Please note that only one <label> element is supported. Additionally, if you place the <label>
element outside the <sbb-form-field>, the automatic assignment is skipped, and it is up to the
consumer to use the correct id references.
If you like to visually hide a label, but still present it with screen readers, use the hiddenLabel property.

When you provide informational text via <sbb-error>, it automatically adds these elements' IDs
to the form element's ariaErrorMessageElements property (or aria-errormessage attribute as fallback).

API Documentation

class: SbbErrorElement, sbb-error

Properties

Slots

class: SbbFormFieldClearElement, sbb-form-field-clear

Properties

Methods

class: SbbFormFieldElement, sbb-form-field

Properties

Methods

CSS Properties

Slots