Why Cofi?

Cofi's offers many features and advantage which are listed here, that no other Form module offers in one set.

Cofi Alternatives

When we considered Cofi's requirements as a form renderer, we initially tried to use / extend different existing modules. Unfortunately, none of the bellow available form modules serves as a viable base per our requirements (such as the ability to define when a field is disabled or excluded and what dependencies each field has).

Json Schema

Json Schema is prototype based and mainly focused on data validations for json instances, whereas Cofi is instance based (meaning the Form input is an initial state that will be changed during its lifecycle) which offers many Form capabilities other than validations, such as dependencies changes, disable terms, exclude terms, required terms, hooks and more.

Final Form

Final form has a similar approach of separating the JavaScript form from any UI implementation. Its downsides as suppose to Cofi are:

  • It doesn't have a lifecycle built-in solution for exclude / disable a field, or defining dependencies between fields. It can be achieved by using the form's subscribers. With this separation - code to maintain it is repeated and longer, and might be implemented tight to a specific UI. One can't understand in a simple look what is the entire form's lifecycle without investigating the code - which makes the transition to a new UI library much harder and longer (and we all transition to newly UI libraries contently).
  • It doesn't offer a set of common components and layouts to begin a simple form with.
  • Writing a form with final form ends up with more code and is less strait forward than just defining a form configuration object

Redux Form

Redux form was created and maintained by the same person who wrote Final Form, before stopped maintaining it and started the new version of Final Form.

Its downsides:

  • Too many stale issues.
  • Low number of pull requests.
  • Too many forks - implies that the original repository is non-sufficient.
  • Too much code to maintain and consume - 26.8kB minified and gzipped.
  • Bad performance.
  • No documentation about breaking changes.
  • The original founder of the repository quit maintaining the module and started a new solution (final-form) that serves the same purpose.

Formik

Formik is a react form solution. It has good documentation and easy to use.

Its downsides as suppose to Cofi are:

  • Restricted to a react only implementation, meaning once replacing UI library - need to re-write all form pages.
  • Not persistent - when reloading a page, form cant go back to its exact ui state as before.
  • seems like Formik registers visible fields only, which is not ideal for wizards / tabs that show only part of the fields, so for instance, invalid fields in a hidden tab are ignored by Formik the form will remain valid although it's not.
  • It doesn't offer a set of common components and layouts to begin a simple form with.

React Admin

React Admin offers a pretty good solution for react form management pages.

Its downsides as suppose to Cofi are:

  • Not UI agnostic - restricted to a react only implementation, meaning once replacing UI library - need to re-write all form pages.
  • Form settings are often tight with react lifecycle - so again once replacing UI library - need to re-write all form pages. In addition, one cant view all form lifecycle in a single place - making it harder to maintain and to new developers o understand what's the form's lifecycle.
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