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React Form Builder

SurveyJS Form Builder is an open-source UI component in React that seamlessly integrates with any backend system and allows you to create and style multiple dynamic HTML forms right in your React application. This component generates form definitions (schemas) in real-time and offers a no-code drag-and-drop interface that makes form creation accessible to anyone. The form builder features a dedicated GUI for conditional rules and form branching and an integrated CSS theme editor for custom form styling and branding. This step-by-step tutorial will help you get started with the Form Builder component in a React application. To add the component to your application, follow the steps below:

View Full Code on GitHub

If you are looking for a quick-start application that includes all SurveyJS components, refer to the following GitHub repositories:

In this guide, the terms "Form Builder" and "Survey Creator" are used interchangeably and both refer to the SurveyJS form building component for React.

Install the survey-creator-react npm Package

Survey Creator for React consists of two npm packages: survey-creator-core (platform-independent code) and survey-creator-react (rendering code). Run the following command to install survey-creator-react. The survey-creator-core package will be installed automatically as a dependency.

npm install survey-creator-react --save

Configure Styles

Import Survey Creator and SurveyJS Form Library style sheets as shown below:

import "survey-core/defaultV2.min.css";
import "survey-creator-core/survey-creator-core.min.css";

Configure Survey Creator

To configure the Survey Creator component, specify its properties in a configuration object. In this tutorial, the object enables the following properties:

  • showLogicTab
    Displays the Logic tab in the tab panel.

  • isAutoSave
    Automatically saves the survey JSON schema on every change.

const creatorOptions = {
  showLogicTab: true,
  isAutoSave: true
};

Pass the configuration object to the SurveyCreator constructor as shown in the code below to instantiate Survey Creator. Assign the produced instance to a constant that will be used later to render the component:

import { SurveyCreator } from "survey-creator-react";

// ...

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  const creator = new SurveyCreator(creatorOptions);
}
View Full Code 
import { SurveyCreator } from "survey-creator-react";
import "survey-core/defaultV2.min.css";
import "survey-creator-core/survey-creator-core.min.css";

const creatorOptions = {
  showLogicTab: true,
  isAutoSave: true
};

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  const creator = new SurveyCreator(creatorOptions);
  return (

  )
}

Render Survey Creator

To render Survey Creator, import the SurveyCreatorComponent, add it to the template, and pass the instance you created in the previous step to the component's creator attribute, as shown below.

If you are using Next.js or another framework that has adopted React Server Components, you need to explicitly mark the React component that renders a SurveyJS component as client code using the 'use client' directive.

// Uncomment the following line if you are using Next.js:
// 'use client'

import { SurveyCreatorComponent, SurveyCreator } from "survey-creator-react";

// ...

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  const creator = new SurveyCreator(creatorOptions);

  return (
    <SurveyCreatorComponent creator={creator} />
  )
}
View Full Code 
// Uncomment the following line if you are using Next.js:
// 'use client'

import { SurveyCreatorComponent, SurveyCreator } from "survey-creator-react";
import "survey-core/defaultV2.min.css";
import "survey-creator-core/survey-creator-core.min.css";

const creatorOptions = {
  showLogicTab: true,
  isAutoSave: true
};

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  const creator = new SurveyCreator(creatorOptions);
  return (
    <SurveyCreatorComponent creator={creator} />
  )
}

Save and Load Survey Model Schemas

Survey Creator produces survey model schemas as JSON objects. You can persist these objects on your server: save updates and restore previously saved schemas. To save a JSON object, implement the saveSurveyFunc function. It accepts two arguments:

  • saveNo
    An incremental number of the current change. Since web services are asynchronous, you cannot guarantee that the service receives the changes in the same order as the client sends them. For example, change #11 may arrive to the server faster than change #10. In your web service code, update the storage only if you receive changes with a higher saveNo.

  • callback
    A callback function. Call it and pass saveNo as the first argument. Set the second argument to true or false based on whether the server applied or rejected the change.

The following code shows how to use the saveSurveyFunc function to save a survey model schema in a localStorage or in your web service:

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  // ...
  creator.saveSurveyFunc = (saveNo, callback) => { 
    // If you use localStorage:
    window.localStorage.setItem("survey-json", creator.text);
    callback(saveNo, true);

    // If you use a web service:
    saveSurveyJson(
        "https://your-web-service.com/",
        creator.JSON,
        saveNo,
        callback
    );
  };
  // ...
}

// If you use a web service:
function saveSurveyJson(url, json, saveNo, callback) {
  fetch(url, {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      'Content-Type': 'application/json;charset=UTF-8'
    },
    body: JSON.stringify(json)
  })
  .then(response => {
    if (response.ok) {
      callback(saveNo, true);
    } else {
      callback(saveNo, false);
    }
  })
  .catch(error => {
    callback(saveNo, false);
  });
}

If you are running a NodeJS server, you can check a survey JSON schema before saving it. On the server, create a SurveyModel and call its toJSON() method. This method deletes unknown properties and incorrect property values from the survey JSON schema:

// Server-side code for a NodeJS backend
import { Model } from "survey-core";

const incorrectSurveyJson = { ... };
const survey = new Model(surveyJson);
const correctSurveyJson = survey.toJSON();
// ...
// Save `correctSurveyJson` in a database
// ...

To load a survey model schema JSON into Survey Creator, assign the schema to Survey Creator's JSON or text property. Use text if the JSON object is converted to a string; otherwise, use JSON. The following code takes a survey model schema from the localStorage. If the schema is not found (for example, when Survey Creator is launched for the first time), a default JSON is used:

// ...
const defaultJson = {
  pages: [{
    name: "Name",
    elements: [{
      name: "FirstName",
      title: "Enter your first name:",
      type: "text"
    }, {
      name: "LastName",
      title: "Enter your last name:",
      type: "text"
    }]
  }]
};

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  // ...
  creator.text = window.localStorage.getItem("survey-json") || JSON.stringify(defaultJson);
  // ...
}
View Full Code 
// Uncomment the following line if you are using Next.js:
// 'use client'

import { SurveyCreatorComponent, SurveyCreator } from "survey-creator-react";
import "survey-core/defaultV2.min.css";
import "survey-creator-core/survey-creator-core.min.css";

const creatorOptions = {
  showLogicTab: true,
  isAutoSave: true
};

const defaultJson = {
  pages: [{
    name: "Name",
    elements: [{
      name: "FirstName",
      title: "Enter your first name:",
      type: "text"
    }, {
      name: "LastName",
      title: "Enter your last name:",
      type: "text"
    }]
  }]
};

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  const creator = new SurveyCreator(creatorOptions);
  creator.text = window.localStorage.getItem("survey-json") || JSON.stringify(defaultJson);
  creator.saveSurveyFunc = (saveNo, callback) => { 
    window.localStorage.setItem("survey-json", creator.text);
    callback(saveNo, true);
    // saveSurveyJson(
    //     "https://your-web-service.com/",
    //     creator.JSON,
    //     saveNo,
    //     callback
    // );
  };
  return (
    <SurveyCreatorComponent creator={creator} />
  )
}

// function saveSurveyJson(url, json, saveNo, callback) {
//   fetch(url, {
//     method: 'POST',
//     headers: {
//       'Content-Type': 'application/json;charset=UTF-8'
//     },
//     body: JSON.stringify(json)
//   })
//   .then(response => {
//     if (response.ok) {
//       callback(saveNo, true);
//     } else {
//       callback(saveNo, false);
//     }
//   })
//   .catch(error => {
//     callback(saveNo, false);
//   });
// }

Manage Image Uploads

When survey authors design a form or questionnaire, they can add images to use as a survey logo or background, in the survey header, or within Image and Image Picker questions. Those images are embedded in the survey and theme JSON schemas as Base64 URLs. However, this technique increases the schema size. To avoid this, you can upload images to a server and save only image links in the JSON schemas.

To implement image upload, handle the onUploadFile event. Its options.files parameter stores the images you should send to your server. Once the server responds with an image link, call the options.callback(status, imageLink) method. Pass "success" as the status parameter and a link to the uploaded image as the imageLink parameter.

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  // ...
  creator.onUploadFile.add((_, options) => {
    const formData = new FormData();
    options.files.forEach(file => {
      formData.append(file.name, file);
    });
    fetch("https://example.com/uploadFiles", {
      method: "post",
      body: formData
    }).then(response => response.json())
      .then(result => {
        options.callback(
          "success",
          // A link to the uploaded file
          "https://example.com/files?name=" + result[options.files[0].name]
        );
      })
      .catch(error => {
        options.callback('error');
      });
  });
  // ...
}

To view the application, run npm run start in a command line and open http://localhost:3000/ in your browser.

View Full Code 
// Uncomment the following line if you are using Next.js:
// 'use client'

import { SurveyCreatorComponent, SurveyCreator } from "survey-creator-react";
import "survey-core/defaultV2.min.css";
import "survey-creator-core/survey-creator-core.min.css";

const creatorOptions = {
  showLogicTab: true,
  isAutoSave: true
};

const defaultJson = {
  pages: [{
    name: "Name",
    elements: [{
      name: "FirstName",
      title: "Enter your first name:",
      type: "text"
    }, {
      name: "LastName",
      title: "Enter your last name:",
      type: "text"
    }]
  }]
};

export function SurveyCreatorWidget() {
  const creator = new SurveyCreator(creatorOptions);
  creator.text = window.localStorage.getItem("survey-json") || JSON.stringify(defaultJson);
  creator.saveSurveyFunc = (saveNo, callback) => { 
    window.localStorage.setItem("survey-json", creator.text);
    callback(saveNo, true);
    // saveSurveyJson(
    //     "https://your-web-service.com/",
    //     creator.JSON,
    //     saveNo,
    //     callback
    // );
  };
  // creator.onUploadFile.add((_, options) => {
  //   const formData = new FormData();
  //   options.files.forEach(file => {
  //     formData.append(file.name, file);
  //   });
  //   fetch("https://example.com/uploadFiles", {
  //     method: "post",
  //     body: formData
  //   }).then(response => response.json())
  //     .then(result => {
  //       options.callback(
  //         "success",
  //         // A link to the uploaded file
  //         "https://example.com/files?name=" + result[options.files[0].name]
  //       );
  //     })
  //     .catch(error => {
  //       options.callback('error');
  //     });
  // });
  return (
    <SurveyCreatorComponent creator={creator} />
  )
}

// function saveSurveyJson(url, json, saveNo, callback) {
//   fetch(url, {
//     method: 'POST',
//     headers: {
//       'Content-Type': 'application/json;charset=UTF-8'
//     },
//     body: JSON.stringify(json)
//   })
//   .then(response => {
//     if (response.ok) {
//       callback(saveNo, true);
//     } else {
//       callback(saveNo, false);
//     }
//   })
//   .catch(error => {
//     callback(saveNo, false);
//   });
// }

View Demo

View Full Code on GitHub

Further Reading

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