React Form Builder | createBuilder

This function creates a builder definition that can be used for building, validating and interpreting schemas.

By a builder definition, we simply mean an object with specific properties. The function itself serves primarily as a type safety helper and doesn't perform any underlying logic.

Reference

`createBuilder(options)`

Use the createBuilder function to create a builder definition.

import { createBuilder } from "@coltorapps/builder";

import { selectFieldEntity, textFieldEntity } from "./entities";

export const formBuilder = createBuilder({
  entities: [textFieldEntity, selectFieldEntity],
});

Parameters

createBuilder accepts a single parameter, which should be an object containing the following properties:

Property	Type	Description
`entities`	array	An array of entities definitions used for building and validating schemas.
`generateEntityId`	function optional	An optional function for generating entities IDs, which is invoked when adding new entities to the schema. It defaults to `() => string` and returns UUIDs by default, by leveraging the `crypto` module when possible. If your app is running in an environment that doesn't natively support this module, this function is useful for implementing your own ID generation logic, or alternatively, you may opt to generate a completely different type of identifier.
`validateEntityId`	function optional	An optional function for validating entities IDs. This function is invoked for each entity in the schema during schema validation, receiving the entity ID of each respective entity. Any exceptions it raises will be automatically caught during schema validation. It defaults to `() => void` and verifies that IDs are in UUID format. Alternatively, you can opt to validate a completely different format of identifier.
`validateSchema`	function optional	An optional function adding custom validation logic that is invoked during schema validation after all base validations, which receives the current schema for validation. It can be asynchronous, and any exceptions it raises will be automatically caught and stored in the builder store, or returned back to you when validating the schema inline. Defaults to `() => void`.
`entitiesExtensions`	object optional	An optional object for extending or overriding the attribute validations of specific entities, or for altering certain configurations of specific entities. It defaults to `{}`. See below for structure details.

Returns

The createBuilder function essentially forwards the provided options parameter as the returned object and doesn't perform any underlying logic, with optional parameters falling back to the defaults described above when not provided.

Property	Type	Description
`entities`	array	An array of entities definitions.
`generateEntityId`	function	A function for generating entities IDs.
`validateEntityId`	function	A function for validating entities IDs.
`validateSchema`	function	A function for additional schema validation.
`entitiesExtensions`	object	An object for extending or overriding attribute validations or entities configurations.

Usually, you will not need to manually access these properties; instead, the created builder definition object is typically used for creating builder stores, interpreter stores, and for schema validation.

Entities Extensions

Extending or overriding attribute validations or entities configurations can be achieved using the entitiesExtensions property when creating a builder definition, which is a deeply partial object of the following shape:

{
  // The key is the name of one of the entities.
  entityName?: {
    // Determines whether the entity can or cannot have any
    // child entities. It can also be an array of entities
    // names for constraining the relationships.
    childrenAllowed?: boolean | string[];
    // Determines whether the entity must always have
    // a parent entity.
    parentRequired?: boolean;
    // An array of entities names that are allowed to be
    // the parent of this entity.
    allowedParents?: string[];
    // Attributes extensions.
    attributes?: {
      // The key corresponds to the name of an attribute.
      attributeName?: {
        // The logic for validating the attribute's value.
        validate?: (value, context) => TValue
      }
    }
  }
}

The validate method in an attribute's extension receives the same arguments as the base validate method of the attribute, except the context object also includes an additional context.validate(value) method, which essentially represents the base validation of the attribute, or the extended validation of the attribute in the entity definition (refer to Attributes Extensions in the createEntity API reference). Invoking it is optional, allowing you to entirely replace the validation with custom logic.

The return type of the new validation must match the return type of the attribute's base validate method.