newforms 0.5.0 - first release as a React library

What's New?

newforms now renders by creating React DOM components instead of using DOMBuilder's environment-specific output - React is a much better fit for newforms on the client side as it takes care of keeping the DOM in sync with your generated forms, without having to blow the lot away every time you want to update.

The parts of newforms base functionality which are ported from Django should now be in line with what's on offer in the upcoming Django 1.7 release.

If you were previously using newforms with text-based templates such as Jade in Node,js, stck with v0.4.2 for now...

Breaking Changes

• Now depends on React 0.9.0.
• Newforms components now render by creating React.DOM components instead of
  relying on context-specific output from DOMBuilder.createElement().
• Components which can be rendered no longer have toString() methods --
  creation of final output is now handled by calling React.renderComponent
  or React.renderComponentToString on a React component which includes
  rendered output of a newforms Form -- this (temporarily) breaks usage of
  newforms in String-based templating libraries such as Jade.
• HTML output has changed -- this will break any tests which depended on the
  specifics of how DOMBuilder generated HTML.
  • React has no equivalent of a virtual DocumentFragment as yet - there are new
    wrapper elements in various places.
  • React wraps free-standing text nodes with <span>.
  • Boolean attributes no longer have a value duplicating the attribute name.
• HTML attribute names must now match what React expects -- no more
  'maxlength' or quoted 'class' and 'for' attributes.
• A String can no longer be used to specify multiple selected items in a
  SelectMultiple -- this used to be an accident based on duck typing of
  index access to both items in an Array and characters in a String. If a
  non-Array is given as the selected value, it will now be wtapped in an Array.
• CheckboxInput no longer silenty swallows any errors thrown by the provided
  checkTest function.
• _hasChanged has moved from Widgets to Fields.
• The default error message for an invalid email address has changed.
• ValidationError API changed -- messages is now a function rather than
  an array of Strings.
• ErrorList API changed -- a messages() method must now be called to
  get final error message strings out of it.
• Replaced asP() with asDiv(), as invalid markup nesting breaks React
  when browsers perform error correction on the DOM.
• Renamed Field.extraCLasses option to Field.cssClass.
• Renamed asUL() methods to asUl().
• Order of mixing in fields from when multiple Forms are passed to __mixin__
  has changed from right-to-left to left-to-right.
• Only one custom field cleaning functon will be called: clean<FieldName>
  or clean_<fieldName> in that order. The ability to define both and have
  both run was unintentional.

New Features

• A type attribute can now be passed to Widgets to take advantage of new
  HTML widget types.
  • Added EmailInput -- now the default widget for EmailField
  • Added URLInput -- now the default widget for URLField
  • Added NumberInput -- now the default widget for IntegerField,
    FloatField and DecimalField
    • IntegerField, FloatField and DecimalField now set HTML5 max,
      min and steo attributes on their widget, as applicable.
• formData now supports new input types: 'email', 'url', 'number' and 'file'
• If a field throws a ValidationError while checking if it's changed, the
  assumption is now that it's changed.
• cleanedData is no longer deleted when a form is invalid.
• CheckboxSelectMultiple now uses a similar renderer to RadioSelect --
  individual checkbox subwidgets can now be accessed.
• id attributes are now added to lists of radio and checkbox inputs.
• Radio and checkbox input lists can now display with nested choices
• SlugField and URLField now support whitespace stripping.
• Changed data checking now supports calling initial values which are functions.
• Added minNum, validateMax and validateMin to formsetFactory and
  BaseFormSet.
• Added a hard limit to the maximum number of forms in a FormSet -- maxNum
• FormSet deletion management data is no longer removd from cleanedData.
• MultiWidget now sets needsMultipartForm based on its child widgets.
• Added requireAllfields option to MultiValueField -- this allows for
  optional subfields when false and a new 'incomplete' validation error
  being thrown when required field are empty.
• Added an addError() method to forms which can be used to set field or
  non-field errors and automatically removes fields from cleanedData,
• cleanedData doesn't need to be returned from Form.clean() any more,
  but if it is, it will still be set as form.cleanedData.
• Made emptyValues a property of Field.prototype so it can be overridden
  by subclasses if necessary.
• TypedChoiceField#coerce can now return an arbitrary value.
• labelSuffix can now be customised when calling BoundField#labelTag.
• validators_ is now exposed as forms.validators.
• Added Field#isEmptyValue and Field#emptyValueArray to ensure empty
  arrays are detected as empty values by default.
• Added the ability to avoid inheriting a field from an extended or mixed-in
  Form by shadowing its field name with a non-field property.
• Added asData() and toJSON() to ErrorObject and ErrorList.
• Custom clean<FieldName>() methods no longer have to return a cleaned
  value, but if they do, it will be inserted back into cleanedData.
• ClearableFileInput now uses overridable functions for templating, making
  it easier to customise.
• FileField now validates that a file is selected when required is
  true in browsers.
• Default rendering methods now allow arbitrary HTML in helpText if
  {__html: ''} is passed instead of a string.
• Added form.setData() to bind new data to a form and re-trigger cleaning.
• Added a custom argument when constructing Fields, to store any metadata
  you need for later.
• ImageField now adds an accept="image/*" attribute to its widget.
• Added form.util.makeChoices helper for creating [value, label] pairs from
  a list of objects.
• Flat lists of choices can now be passed into Fields and Widgets which take
  choices.
• Made hidden fields controlled components which always reflect form state on
  each render, since there's no way for the user to interact with them.
• Made FormSets more usable on the client-side:
  • Form instances aren't cached, so adding and removing forms by tweaking form
    count variables works without having to recreate the formset, or touching
    undocumented state.
  • ManagementForm isn't used for formset configuration details when the formset
    is bound - as a result, you don't have to render its hidden fields for
    browser-only usage.
  • If rendered, the ManagementForm always reflects FormSet state, not bound
    data, so doing things like bumping formset.extra to show another form
    works regardless of whether or not the formset is bound.
  • Added a setData() method to bind new formset.data and re-trigger
    validation.

Bug Fixes

• '0' should be treated as true by CheckboxInput.
• CheckboxInput._hasChanged now handles an initial 'false' String.
• FloatField and DecimalField now accept '1.' as a valid input.
• Fixed form constructors used as mixin mixins having their own
  baseFields overwritten and the prototype properties intended for the new
  form applied to them.
• Fixed Boundfield#subWidgets not passing id or autoId along, so
  label htmlFors and input ids weren't getting generated.