Focus – Angular material responsive forms

Introduction to Angular Material Responsive Forms with Focus

Angular Material provides a powerful and extensible library for building high-quality UI components. One of the most important and widely used components in this library is the md-form directive, which allows you to create responsive and accessible forms. In this tutorial, we will learn how to use the md-form directive, specifically focusing on the new focus feature that was introduced in Angular Material 9.

Why Use Focus in Angular Material Responsive Forms?

When building responsive forms, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring that the form remains accessible and usable on various devices and screen sizes. The focus feature in Angular Material responsive forms helps solve this problem by automatically shifting the focus to the next form control as the user navigates the form using their keyboard or by tapping on the form elements with their touchscreen device.

This not only improves the overall user experience but also ensures that the form remains accessible for users who rely on keyboard-only navigation or assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Prerequisites

Before starting this tutorial, make sure you have:

1. Angular 9 or higher installed on your machine.
2. The Angular Material library installed and imported in your Angular project.
3. Basic understanding of Angular and Angular Material.

Step 1: Creating a Basic Responsive Form

To start, create a new Angular project using the Angular CLI by running the following command:

ng new responsive-forms-tutorial

Next, navigate to the project directory and install the Angular Material library by running the following command:

ng add @angular/material

Once the installation is complete, open the app.component.html file and add the following code:

<mat-card>
  <mat-card-header>
    <mat-card-title>Responsive Form Tutorial</mat-card-title>
  </mat-card-header>
  <mat-card-content>
    <form [formGroup]="myForm" (ngSubmit)="onSubmit()">
      <mat-form-field>
        <input matInput formControlName="name" required>
        <mat-label>Name</mat-label>
      </mat-form-field>
      <mat-form-field>
        <input matInput formControlName="email" required email>
        <mat-label>Email</mat-label>
      </mat-form-field>
      <button mat-raised-button color="primary" type="submit">Submit</button>
    </form>
  </mat-card-content>
</mat-card>

In this code, we create a basic form with two input fields (name and email) and a submit button. We also create a myForm form group using the FormGroup class from the @angular/forms library.

Step 2: Enabling Focus in the Responsive Form

To enable the focus feature in our form, we need to wrap each form control in the md-focus directive. Update the app.component.html file by adding the md-focus directive to each form control:

<mat-card>
  <mat-card-header>
    <mat-card-title>Responsive Form Tutorial</mat-card-title>
  </mat-card-header>
  <mat-card-content>
    <form [formGroup]="myForm" (ngSubmit)="onSubmit()">
      <mat-form-field>
        <input md-focus matInput formControlName="name" required>
        <mat-label>Name</mat-label>
      </mat-form-field>
      <mat-form-field>
        <input md-focus matInput formControlName="email" required email>
        <mat-label>Email</mat-label>
      </mat-form-field>
      <button mat-raised-button color="primary" type="submit">Submit</button>
    </form>
  </mat-card-content>
</mat-card>

Step 3: Adding Keyboard Navigation to the Form

To allow users to navigate the form using their keyboard, we need to add the tabToNext property to the md-focus directive. Update the app.component.html file by adding the tabToNext property:

<mat-card>
  <mat-card-header>
    <mat-card-title>Responsive Form Tutorial</mat-card-title>
  </mat-card-header>
  <mat-card-content>
    <form [formGroup]="myForm" (ngSubmit)="onSubmit()">
      <mat-form-field>
        <input md-focus [tabToNext]="email" matInput formControlName="name" required>
        <mat-label>Name</mat-label>
      </mat-form-field>
      <mat-form-field>
        <input md-focus [tabToNext]="submit" matInput formControlName="email" required email>
        <mat-label>Email</mat-label>
      </mat-form-field>
      <button md-focus type="submit">Submit</button>
    </form>
  </mat-card-content>
</mat-card>

In this code, we added the tabToNext property to each form control, specifying the next control that the user should be focused on when they press the tab key.

Step 4: Styling the Form

Finally, we need to style the form to make it look more visually appealing. Update the app.component.css file by adding the following code:

mat-card-content {
  padding: 20px;
}

form {
  width: 50%;
  margin: 0 auto;
  text-align: center;
}

mat-form-field {
  width: 100%;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
}

In this code, we added some basic styling to the form to make it look more centered and responsive.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to create a basic responsive form in Angular Material and enable the focus feature to improve accessibility and usability. We also learned how to add keyboard navigation to the form by using the tabToNext property in the md-focus directive. With these skills, you can create complex and responsive forms that are easy to use and accessible for all users.