feat: Add `form` property to IonButton to submit from outside form

[TamoMaez]

Bug Report

Ionic version: 4.x

Current behavior: IonButton does not trigger submission of the form. You need this when your submit button is outside the form itself.

<form id="some-form">....</form>
<ion-button form="some-form">...</ion-button>

Expected behavior: Should trigger the submit event of the form like so: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_button_form.asp

Steps to reproduce:

Add the code below:

<form id="some-form" (ngSubmit)="submit('Triggered')"></form>
<ion-button form="some-form">Trigger submit</ion-button>

Tap on the button and nothing will happen

Related code:

https://stackblitz.com/edit/ionic-v4-angular-tabs-qx5u9v?file=src%2Fapp%2Ftab1%2Ftab1.page.html

Workaround: Hide native button element and trigger it by reference

...<form ... id="transaction-form">...</form>
...
<ion-footer>
    <ion-toolbar button (click)="submitBtn.click()">
        <ion-title>Some title</ion-title>
        <button hidden #submitBtn type="submit" form="transaction-form"></button>
    </ion-toolbar>
</ion-footer>

[indraraj26]

if you place ion-button with type submit inside form it should trigger automatically. let me know if this doesn't work for you

[liamdebeasi]

@indraraj26 Is correct. You need type="submit" on the ion-button otherwise it will not submit the form.

[TamoMaez]

@indraraj26 Is correct. You need type="submit" on the ion-button otherwise it will not submit the form.

Hi @liamdebeasi , adding type="submit" doesn't fix the problem https://stackblitz.com/edit/ionic-v4-angular-tabs-qx5u9v?file=src%2Fapp%2Ftab1%2Ftab1.page.html

When you are outside the form, adding the form attribute of the ion-button (which exists for this purpose) doesn't trigger submission. Please reopen, thx!

[indraraj26]

Hi @liamdebeasi ,

He is just assigned the id of form to button, Native button is triggering the ngSubmit but not ion-button which is wrapper around button.

what i see we do not have form props in ion-button.

<form id="some-form" (ngSubmit)="submit()"></form>
    <ion-button type="submit" form="some-form">Trigger form submit (doesn't work)</ion-button>
    <hr />
    <button type="submit" form="some-form">Trigger form submit (does work)</button>

If possible please re-open

[liamdebeasi]

Ok looks like this is only an issue when used outside the form as stated.

I am marking this as a feature request as ion-button does not support the form property. If anyone would like to make a PR for this feature, please let me know!

There are 2 things we need to do:

1. Add the form property to ion-button.
2. Update https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic/blob/master/core/src/components/button/button.tsx#L155 to select the form element if the form property is provided.

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[indraraj26]

Hi @liamdebeasi , I cloned ionic repo yesterday i had so many errors like cleancss not recognized etc that i resolved but now i dont know how to include ionic-angular to my locally project to test.

[TakumaKira]

Hi @indraraj26,

I think this will help.

[itsLucario]

Hi @liamdebeasi ,

I have created PR which addresses the feature request and enables form submission even outside the form with added form property.

[tanetrail]

Hi

Is this feature available in Ionic-React or when will it be available in ionic-react. not able to submit outside of the form. Thanks for all the help

[stewones]

this still an issue as of sep 2021

I'm having to fake a submit button inside the form as workaround

[darron1217]

Really simple thing.. any updates?

[sean-perkins]

Hello everyone 👋 we have had some great contributions in the past towards this PR. After reviewing the proposed changes, I want to outline a few requirements so that if anyone is still interested, they can submit a PR and it can be reviewed quickly.

The proposed introduction for this feature is the following property:

@Prop() form?: string | HTMLFormElement;

It should accept a string of the form owner's id. It will query the closest form with that id, if defined. Alternatively, it accepts a reference directly to the form element. This is useful for framework implementations that support working with refs.

Tests are a must for these changes. We need to validate with Playwright, that the form is submitted with both use cases (by form id and by reference).

Thanks!

[postnerd]

@sean-perkins I've created a PR yesterday (after I was facing a similar challenge with an app I am working on). I tried to follow your instructions and also added support for referencing a HTMLFormElement. But since this is my first PR for this project, I'm not quite sure if my solution fits your ideas.

Especially my implementation of the HTMLFormElement is maybe a little off, since I'm not even sure if the form prop can still be a HTMLFormElement at the time of runtime of the handleClick function.

If there is a larger implementation needed to support the HTMLFormElement referencing idea maybe we can split this feature request in two parts:

1. implement string support in ion-button for form prop
2. expand form prop support to HTMLFormElement references

If so I would reduce the scope of my PR and we can create a new issue for the second part. Since I'm pretty sure, that the string support would do the trick for 90% of the people (and we can stop using shadow buttons or other workarounds).

Please let me know if I should add/change something.

[sean-perkins]

This feature was completed in https://github.com/ionic-team/ionic-framework/pull/25913 and will be available in Ionic 6.3.0 (upcoming release).

[ionitron-bot[bot]]

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