Angular 6 - Reactive Forms Validation Example

Example built with Angular 6.0.0

Other versions available:

• Angular Reactive Forms: Angular 14, 10, 9, 8, 7
• Angular Template-Driven Forms: Angular 14, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6
• Blazor: Blazor WebAssembly
• Next.js: Next.js
• React + Formik: Formik 2, 1
• React Hook Form: React Hook Form 7, 6
• Vue + VeeValidate: Vue 3 Composition API, Vue 3 Options API, Vue 2
• Vue + Vuelidate: Vue 2

This is a quick example of how to setup form validation in Angular 6 using Reactive Forms. The example is a simple registration form with pretty standard fields for first name, last name, email and password. All fields are required, plus the email field must be a valid email address and the password field must have a min length of 6.

I've setup the form to validate on submit rather than as soon as each field is changed, this is implemented with a 'submitted' field in the app component that is set to true when the form is submitted for the first time.

Styling of the example is all done with Bootstrap 4 CSS.

Here it is in action: (See on StackBlitz at https://stackblitz.com/edit/angular-6-reactive-form-validation)

Reactive Forms Validation App Component

The app component defines the form fields and validators for our registration form using an Angular FormBuilder to create an instance of a FormGroup that is stored in the registerForm property. The registerForm is then bound to the form in the template below using the [formGroup] directive.

I also added a getter 'f' as a convenience property to make it easier to access form controls from the template. So for example you can access the email field in the template using f.email instead of registerForm.controls.email.

import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';
import { FormBuilder, FormGroup, Validators } from '@angular/forms';

@Component({
    selector: 'app',
    templateUrl: 'app.component.html'
})

export class AppComponent implements OnInit {
    registerForm: FormGroup;
    submitted = false;

    constructor(private formBuilder: FormBuilder) { }

    ngOnInit() {
        this.registerForm = this.formBuilder.group({
            firstName: ['', Validators.required],
            lastName: ['', Validators.required],
            email: ['', [Validators.required, Validators.email]],
            password: ['', [Validators.required, Validators.minLength(6)]]
        });
    }

    // convenience getter for easy access to form fields
    get f() { return this.registerForm.controls; }

    onSubmit() {
        this.submitted = true;

        // stop here if form is invalid
        if (this.registerForm.invalid) {
            return;
        }

        alert('SUCCESS!! :-)')
    }
}

Reactive Forms Validation App Template

The app component template contains all the html markup for displaying the example registration form in your browser. The form element uses the [formGroup] directive to bind to the registerForm FormGroup in the app component above.

The form binds the form submit event to the onSubmit() handler in the app component using the Angular event binding (ngSubmit)="onSubmit()". Validation messages are displayed only after the user attempts to submit the form for the first time, this is controlled with the submitted property of the app component.

<!-- main app container -->
<div class="jumbotron">
    <div class="container">
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-md-6 offset-md-3">
                <h2>Angular 6 Reactive Form Validation</h2>
                <form [formGroup]="registerForm" (ngSubmit)="onSubmit()">
                    <div class="form-group">
                        <label>First Name</label>
                        <input type="text" formControlName="firstName" class="form-control" [ngClass]="{ 'is-invalid': submitted && f.firstName.errors }" />
                        <div *ngIf="submitted && f.firstName.errors" class="invalid-feedback">
                            <div *ngIf="f.firstName.errors.required">First Name is required</div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                    <div class="form-group">
                        <label>Last Name</label>
                        <input type="text" formControlName="lastName" class="form-control" [ngClass]="{ 'is-invalid': submitted && f.lastName.errors }" />
                        <div *ngIf="submitted && f.lastName.errors" class="invalid-feedback">
                            <div *ngIf="f.lastName.errors.required">Last Name is required</div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                    <div class="form-group">
                        <label>Email</label>
                        <input type="text" formControlName="email" class="form-control" [ngClass]="{ 'is-invalid': submitted && f.email.errors }" />
                        <div *ngIf="submitted && f.email.errors" class="invalid-feedback">
                            <div *ngIf="f.email.errors.required">Email is required</div>
                            <div *ngIf="f.email.errors.email">Email must be a valid email address</div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                    <div class="form-group">
                        <label>Password</label>
                        <input type="password" formControlName="password" class="form-control" [ngClass]="{ 'is-invalid': submitted && f.password.errors }" />
                        <div *ngIf="submitted && f.password.errors" class="invalid-feedback">
                            <div *ngIf="f.password.errors.required">Password is required</div>
                            <div *ngIf="f.password.errors.minlength">Password must be at least 6 characters</div>
                        </div>
                    </div>
                    <div class="form-group">
                        <button [disabled]="loading" class="btn btn-primary">Register</button>
                    </div>
                </form>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

Reactive Forms Validation App Module

There isn't much going on in the app module other than the standard stuff, the main thing you need to remember for using reactive forms in Angular is to import the ReactiveFormsModule from '@angular/forms' and include it in the imports array of the @NgModule decorator.

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { ReactiveFormsModule } from '@angular/forms';

import { AppComponent } from './app.component';

@NgModule({
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    ReactiveFormsModule
  ],
  declarations: [
    AppComponent
  ],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})

export class AppModule { }