Custom control

In some cases the built-in controls just won't cut it. former allows you to build custom form controls that will suit your needs the best.

Custom controls are just normal widgets that interact with former's API.

Obtaining FormerProvider

FormerProvider is a ChangeNotifier that holds the current form. It provides various methods to interact with the form. You can obtain the instance of FormerProvider that is controlling your form with:

final provider = Former.of<MyForm>(context);

The generic type must match the type of your form. Otherwise, former will not be able to locate the provider.

Value handling

Built-in controls handle value tracking and updating for you. However, in a custom control, you need to do that manually. FormerProvider has an update method that lets you update a field with the given value.

Let's assume you have a login form called LoginForm, and you want to update the username field. To do so, call the update method as such:

provider.update(LoginFormField.username, 'NewUsername');

The first parameter takes in the field that you want to update, in this case username (The LoginFormField is automatically generated for you that includes all the fields of your form). The second parameter takes in the new value that you want the field to hold, in this case 'NewUsername'.