Templates:Forms tutorials?

Does anyone know of any links to tutorials for the Templates:Forms package. I can’t find any on google.

Thanks :slightly_smiling:

There is an example project here: meteor-templates-forms-example

That being said if you’re looking for assistance with a Meteor forms package, you’re probably better off going with the pretty much De facto standard of aldeed:autoform (for Blaze anyways). You’ll find a gazillion tutorials and sample apps using it.

Thanks for replying @hwillson. I’ve used Autoform before. I find it to great for automatically creating a form for you but when you want to create a custom form with custom stylised inputs it starts getting really hard.

Templates:forms seemed to be a great compromise between automation and customisation but the documentation is a little bad. They have quite a few examples but nothing simple to help you get off the ground. Hence why I was hoping there was a tutorial around that would help me better understand the examples.

What do you find hard about creating custom/stylized forms with Autoform? Can you post specific examples? Maybe we can help out - it’s actually not that bad once you get the hang of it, and the Autoform demo site really helps show how to fully customize just about everything.

Perhaps its best if I just say what I’m trying to build.

So essentially what I’m trying to create is a layout builder much like AFC’s Flexible content field. If you play the Vimeo video on that page at 2:40 you’ll see it in action.

It looks like an array of forms that get dynamically placed depending on what you select in the drop down.

I’ve given this a try in AutoForms where each array item contained all of the forms in a hidden state, then when you select the form you want it makes that form visible . Unfortunately it didn’t work well at all and was very inefficient!

Another issue is that all the templates use bootstrap and I’m not really a fan of it. I know you can change this but If I do that I might as well just use Templates:Forms which is a lighter package.

It seems that Autoforms is no longer maintained. Lots of open issues and PR’s and no response. :frowning:

I’ve noticed this too from reading a few of the 366 open issues. If the Meteor community has placed it as the De facto standard then why does it feel abandoned?

I know it looks like that, but I bet the uncertainty of Blaze’s future helped slow issue/PR progress down. AutoForm is still the most widely used Blaze based form system by a large margin, and has definitely been battle hardened. Looking over a lot of the open issues I get the feeling they aren’t bugs as much as they are calls for help. I agree though - that large open issue list doesn’t instil a lot of confidence.

That being said, I know the authors are busy and keep contributing on a bunch of other open source Meteor packages; I bet they’d welcome any help! :wink:

@jammer Yes, autoform and all @aldeed 's meteor packages are abandoned even being the go-to form package. Though the work which @aldeed has done was remarkable but he must be having his valid reasons.

Being said that, if you’re planning for small form based application then still AutoForm will help you out incredibly. But if you’re having primarily form based application and it’s going to be used fairly good then I will suggest to use Ruby-on-Rail’s scaffolding or other old framework where form packages are matured enough and active.

Before some months, I was pushing meteor to all of my friend circle/talks, but when I started to build serious big applications using this stack… I realized that meteor is only good for small/prototypes apps.

It may sound harsh but it’s reality and that’s why whole old community members are looking out for something else other than meteor.

I agree to @hwillson that most of the issues on the repo is seeking help, few of them is an actual bug and I think also @aldeed is currently evaluating the current situation on the view and data layer.

Hey @jammer as to your issue on autoform, I believe you can achieve customization just like on the video by creating a reactive variable by manipulating instance of a template, here’s the link to the guide to give you an idea and for additional resource here’s an article on @themeteorchef.

Additionally, you can use dynamic template along with the above resources or search here on the forums.

I hope this helps.

You heard it here everyone - time to pack it in and head home. :scream:

Seriously though I’ve worked with Meteor in a wide variety of production apps varying greatly in size and complexity, and have always found it to be up for any task I throw at it. Sure it’s great for small apps and prototypes, but if you dive in just a bit further and expand your knowledge of how it works under the covers, and how those inner workings can be adjusted to your app’s benefit, you’ll find it can handle just about anything. Any app, no matter what technology/tools are used, has to be designed to handle extra complexity as the application grows. Honestly, I find Meteor to really excel at this (and the clients/companies I’ve worked with would agree).

Old community members are also maintaining old Meteor apps, that keep doing awesome things. A lot of them are waiting for the dust to settle on the upcoming Meteor 1.3 changes before jumping back in to contribute more awesome Meteor packages (and/or update existing ones).

In the meantime these packages are all open source - fork and tweak as necessary!

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Awesome reply @hwillson. When I read @Invictus comment I had to go for a walk to calm down. Grrr.

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True. And just to be sure, I am thankful for @aldeed’s work. There can be many reasons why the project is on hold and I’m not complaining. But I am interested to know what the future will be for his packages.

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I’ll quote myself from another post:

I’m not sure why autoform gets the label “abandoned”. I use it in production apps, as do others, and it works fine. “On hold” is accurate, and yes, I’ve been waiting a bit to see how the blaze/react/angular debates go, which is starting to be clearer now. “Lack of support” is probably also accurate in recent months, but there are plenty of community members who can help answer questions.

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Perhaps you should get a bot to randomly select one among a comment pool like “hey I’ll look into it” or “hey I’m working on it now” and post it on a random open issue, you may even randomly post “hey that’s been answered before” and automatically close the issue and you’ll have no headache at least 90% of the time :wink:

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