8 Best React Form Libraries for Developers in 2023

Forms are the critical interface for users to interact with web applications by inputting data. Handling form state management, validation, error handling and submission can involve large amounts of complex, repetitive code.

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React form libraries abstract away this boilerplate by providing production-ready components and hooks to build, validate and manage forms.

In this comprehensive guide, we evaluate the top form libraries for use in React projects in 2023.

Why React Form Libraries are Essential

Before reviewing individual options, let‘s discuss why leveraging libraries can benefit your React forms:

Simplified Management

Tracking form state across user interactions like input changes, submissions, and validation involves significant duplicate code. Libraries encapsulate state in easy to use hooks and components.

This removes the need to manually manage complexity or integrate external state management libraries.

Built-in Validation

Validation is crucial for ensuring submitted data meets requirements. Form libraries provide turnkey support for client and server-side validation with useful error messaging.

This guides users to input accurate information without unnecessary submissions. Server-side validation remains essential as additional security measure.

UI Framework Alignment

Many form libraries are built to automatically match the styling of popular UI kits like Material UI, Ant Design and Bootstrap. This brings cohesive design with minimal effort.

Enhanced Productivity

The bottomline benefit is dramatically less code and complexity versus building custom forms. Development and testing time can reduced by 50% or more in many cases.

Now let‘s explore leading form library options for React:

1. React Hook Form

React Hook Form is an incredibly lightweight and flexible React forms library with built-in validation.

Weighing at just 5KB gzipped, it helps optimize React app performance.

Here are some key capabilities:

  • Performant memoized custom hook-based approach avoids unnecessary re-renders
  • Validation support with customizable error messages
  • Form Builder with drag and drop editing
  • Works with React Native
  • Extensive API for advanced customization

Let‘s look at a simple React Hook Form implementation:

import { useForm } from "react-hook-form";

function App() {
  const { register, handleSubmit } = useForm();

  function onSubmit(data) {}

  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}>
      <input {...register("firstName")} />
      <select {...register("category")}> 
        <option value="A">A</option>
      </select>

      <button>Submit</button> 
    </form>
  );
}

We register inputs for state management and then access the data on submit. For validation:

register("age", {
  required: true,
  min: 18,
  max: 99  
})

Benchmarks show React Hook Form achieving efficient re-render rates compared to alternatives. It‘s an great choice across usage scopes.

2. Formik

Formik takes a React-centric approach to building forms with minimal abstraction. It has a large production deployment footprint.

Formik is oriented around allowing fine-grained control over form UX interactions. Key capabilities:

  • Declarative API fits cleanly with React patterns
  • Validation at the field and form level
  • Handlers for events like onBlur, onChange
  • Bidirectional data mapping between UI and API payloads
  • Integration with React Native
  • Small size at 10KB gzipped

Here‘s an example Formik form: 

import { Formik, Form, Field, ErrorMessage } from ‘formik‘;

const MyForm = () => (
  <Formik
    initialValues={{ email: ‘‘ }}
    validate={validate} 
    onSubmit={submitHandler}
  >
    {({ isSubmitting }) => (
      <Form>
        <Field type="email" name="email" />

        <ErrorMessage name="email" />

        <button type="submit" disabled={isSubmitting}>
          Submit
        </button>
      </Form>
    )}
  </Formik>
);

The declarative style fits great for existing React developers. For those needing maximum control, Formik shines.

3. Uniforms

Uniforms is an innovative React library for rapidly building forms from any schema (JSON, GraphQL, Zod, etc).

It supports high performance features like:

  • Live schema-powered form builder
  • Async submissions and Validation
  • Over a dozen field types
  • Themes – Material UI, Semantic UI, Bootstrap
  • ~50% less code than alternatives
  • Tiny size at 4KB gzipped

Here is an example Uniforms form tied to a schema:

import { AutoForm, LongTextField, SubmitField } from ‘uniforms-material‘;
import schema from ‘./schema‘;  

const MyForm = () => (
  <AutoForm schema={schema}>
    <LongTextField name="description" />
    <SubmitField />
  </AutoForm>
);

AutoForm handles connecting the schema automatically. Additional benefits like the included Material theme and builder make Uniforms very rapid for generating data forms.

It‘s a great choice when forms have dynamic fields or logic tied to datasets.

4. React Final Form

React Final Form is an incredibly lightweight (2KB gzipped!) yet fully featured subscription-based form state manager.

It uses a publish-subscribe model to trigger re-renders only for changed form data. Benefits:

  • Fine-grained Conditional Field Subscriptions
  • Bindings for Material UI, Semantic UI
  • Works with React Native
  • Tiny footprint
  • Observable API approach

Sample implementation:

import { Form, Field } from ‘react-final-form‘;

const MyForm = () => (
  <Form
    onSubmit={onSubmit}
    validate={validate}

    render={({ handleSubmit, form }) => (
      <form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
        <Field
          name="firstName" 
          component="input"
        />

        <button type="submit">Submit</button>
      </Form>
    )}
  />  
);

The Field component manages subscriptions and selective state updates in an incredibly efficient way.

For large, complex forms with 100+ inputs, React Final Form is likely the best choice for optimal rendering performance.

5. KendoReact Form

KendoReact Form integrates form state management across standard HTML inputs as well as KendoReact UI components.

Benefits include:

  • Works with custom components
  • Horizontal & vertical layout support
  • Field-level validation
  • Right-to-left support
  • Localization
  • Tiny footprint at 7KB gzipped

Here is sample usage:

import { Form, FormElement } from ‘@progress/kendo-react-form‘;
import { Input } from ‘@progress/kendo-react-inputs‘;

const MyForm = () => (
  <Form
    onSubmit={onSubmit} 
    validateOnBlur
  >
    <FormElement>
      <Input
        name="firstName"
        label="First Name"
      />
    </FormElement>

    <button type="submit">Submit</button>
  </Form> 
);

KendoReact Form brings integrated, consistent form building to the Kendo UI suite. With 100+ components, it accelerates development across complex enterprise apps.

Additional Options

Beyond those detailed above, here are a few other React form libraries to consider:

Formsy React – Imperative APIs for explicit form state control.

React JSONSchema Form – Generate forms from JSON Schema definitions

HouseForm – 4KB validation library powered by Zod typed models.

react-reactive-form – Build nested form object trees with value change subscriptions.

How To Choose?

With several great form libraries now covered, how do you select the right one?

Here are key aspects to consider for your project:

  • App Needs – Are you building complex, data-driven forms? Just simple login/contact forms?
  • Size Constraints – If bundles must be ultra lean, React Final Form for example
  • Usage Complexity – Declarative vs imperative APIs
  • Native Needs – Will forms also be reused on React Native?
  • UX Customization – Unique styling needs?
  • Developer Familiarity – Leverage existing React skills?

Spend a bit evaluating options to see what alignment makes sense.

Most use cases can succeed with any library here. Trying out the APIs generally reveals best fit.

Key Takeways

To recap, here are main points covered:

  • Form libraries greatly simplify management, validation and development effort
  • Leading options have complementary strengths like performance, flexibility etc
  • Consider app needs and team skills when selecting
  • Layer both client and server-side validation for robustness
  • Testing across devices and inputs remains essential

Weigh the options – there‘s likely a library here that can accelerate your next React project!

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