Formeo

A highly configurable drag & drop form building module for creating dynamic, responsive forms with an intuitive visual editor.

Demo

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation
• Usage
• Framework Integration
• Theming
• Documentation
• Development
• Contributing
• Changelog

Features

• 🎯 Drag & Drop Editing - Intuitive visual form builder
• 📐 Column/Inline Layout - Create multi-column forms and inline field groups
• 🔀 Conditional Fields - Show/hide fields based on user input
• 🎨 Custom Controls - Extensible control API for custom field types
• 🌍 i18n Support - Multi-language support out of the box
• 📱 Responsive - Mobile-friendly form editor and renderer
• ⚡ Zero Config - Works out of the box with sensible defaults
• 🔧 Highly Configurable - Extensive options and event system
• 📦 TypeScript Support - Full type definitions included
• 🎭 Preview Mode - Test forms before deployment

Installation

NPM

npm install formeo

Yarn

yarn add formeo

CDN

For quick prototyping or simple projects, you can use a CDN:

<!-- JavaScript -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/formeo@latest/dist/formeo.umd.js"></script>

<!-- CSS -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/formeo@latest/dist/formeo.min.css">

This exposes the window.FormeoEditor and window.FormeoRenderer globals. For production, pin a version (e.g. formeo@5.13.1) instead of @latest and add an integrity hash with crossorigin="anonymous" — see Installation in the renderer docs.

Usage

Basic Setup

First, import Formeo into your project:

import { FormeoEditor, FormeoRenderer } from 'formeo'
import 'formeo/dist/formeo.min.css'

Creating a Form Editor

// Create a container element in your HTML
// <div id="formeo-editor"></div>

const editorOptions = {
  editorContainer: '#formeo-editor',
  // Add any additional options here
}

// Initialize the editor
const editor = new FormeoEditor(editorOptions)

Saving Form Data

// Get the form data (typically in an onSave event)
const formData = editor.formData

// Save to your backend
fetch('/api/forms', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify(formData)
})

Rendering a Form

// Create a container element for the rendered form
// <div id="formeo-renderer"></div>

const rendererOptions = {
  renderContainer: '#formeo-renderer',
  // Add any additional options here
}

// Initialize the renderer and render the form
const renderer = new FormeoRenderer(rendererOptions)
renderer.render(formData)

Complete Example

import { FormeoEditor, FormeoRenderer } from 'formeo'
import 'formeo/dist/formeo.min.css'

// Set up the editor
const editor = new FormeoEditor({
  editorContainer: '#formeo-editor',
  events: {
    onSave: ({ formData }) => {
      console.log('Form saved:', formData)
      // Render the form
      renderer.render(formData)
    }
  }
})

// Set up the renderer
const renderer = new FormeoRenderer({
  renderContainer: '#formeo-renderer'
})

TypeScript

Formeo ships its own type definitions (dist/formeo.d.ts, dist/formeo.d.cts); TypeScript picks them up when you import formeo. See TypeScript for what is typed.

import { FormeoEditor, FormeoRenderer } from 'formeo'
import type { FormeoEditorOptions, FormeoFormData } from 'formeo'

const renderer = new FormeoRenderer({ renderContainer: '#formeo-renderer' })

const options: FormeoEditorOptions = {
  editorContainer: '#formeo-editor',
  events: {
    onSave: ({ formData }) => renderer.render(formData),
  },
}

const editor = new FormeoEditor(options)
editor.whenReady().then(() => {
  const formData: FormeoFormData = editor.formData
  console.log(Object.keys(formData.fields))
})

FormeoOptions and FormData still work as aliases of FormeoEditorOptions and FormeoFormData.

Framework Integration

Formeo can be integrated with popular frontend frameworks:

• React Integration Guide - Custom hooks, functional components, and Context API patterns
• Angular Integration Guide - A standalone component, SSR-safe setup, and reading submitted answers

Theming

Every color formeo uses is a --formeo-* CSS custom property, and so is the width of a label that sits beside its control, all declared on :root with zero specificity. Override them on :root or <body>: formeo appends its dialogs to document.body, so a rule scoped to the editor's container misses them. A narrower selector works too if it also covers .formeo-dialog and, when you move the controls panel with controls.container, .formeo-controls. For example, to map your own dark theme:

:root {
  color-scheme: dark;
  color: #fafafa;
  --formeo-bg: #0a0a0a;
  --formeo-bg-hover: #1a1a1a;
  --formeo-text: #fafafa;
  --formeo-border: #262626;
  --formeo-icon: #e5e5e5;
}

• Dark preset: add the formeo-dark class to <body> (or :root). It sets color-scheme: dark on that subtree, so your own native controls inside it darken too. Dialogs take the preset's background and text colors as well.
• Your own dark theme: set color-scheme: dark as well, and make sure your mapping's scope includes .formeo-dialog. Outside the preset, formeo leaves the dialog's own background and text color, the text color of inputs and selects, and the checkboxes to the browser, which only switches them to dark-mode colors under a dark color-scheme.
• Text color: outside the dark preset, the editor and controls containers inherit the page's color. Setting --formeo-text alone only recolors text formeo colors explicitly, not inherited labels, so set color on your container too.
• Derived properties: some defaults are computed from another color at build time and don't follow when you override that color. If you change the base, override these too: --formeo-bg-hover, --formeo-overlay, --formeo-danger-subtle, --formeo-success-text / --formeo-warning-text / --formeo-danger-text, --formeo-column-outline-soft, and the --formeo-*-highlight / --formeo-*-highlight-text properties.

The full list, with defaults, is in _properties.scss. It isn't included in the npm package. The groups, without the --formeo- prefix, are:

• Surfaces: bg, bg-hover, surface-muted, stage-bg, stage-shadow, overlay
• Text and icons: text, text-strong, text-secondary, text-muted, text-subtle, on-accent, icon
• Borders and focus: border, border-strong, focus
• Accents: primary, success, warning and danger (each with a -dark variant), success-text, warning-text and danger-text (text and icons drawn in an accent color, lighter in the dark preset), danger-subtle, info, remove-bg
• Component outlines: {stage,row,column,field,option}-outline, -outline-text, -highlight and -highlight-text, plus column-outline-soft
• Layout: label-width (the label's width when labelPosition is before or after, 10rem)

Visual changes from 5.1.3: icons that hard-coded #444 (header, paragraph and the triangles) now use --formeo-icon, which defaults to #000. The column resize-handle triangles now use the column outline color (--formeo-column-outline-soft, or the darker --formeo-column-outline on hover) instead of #444.

Documentation

Comprehensive documentation is available in the docs directory:

• Options - Complete configuration reference
• Controls - Custom field types and controls API
• Events - Available events and callbacks
• Actions - Action handlers
• Editor API - Editor methods and properties
• TypeScript - Shipped type definitions and typed events
• Using a CSS Framework - Style rendered forms with Bootstrap or any framework
• Build Tools - Development and build utilities

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or higher)
• npm or yarn

Getting Started

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Draggable/formeo.git
cd formeo

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development server
npm start

The demo will be available at http://localhost:5173/

Available Scripts

npm run dev          # Start development server
npm run build        # Build library and demo
npm run build:lib    # Build library only
npm test             # Run tests
npm run lint         # Lint code
npm run format       # Format code with Biome

Running Tests

# Unit tests
npm test

# End-to-end tests
npm run playwright:test

# View test report
npm run playwright:test:report

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details on:

• Setting up your development environment
• Code style and conventions
• Submitting pull requests
• Reporting issues

License

Formeo is MIT licensed.

Docs

Changelog

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Made with ❤️ by Draggable