Controlled Forms in React Lab Setup

Setup

Open your Terminal application and navigate to your ~/code/ga/labs directory:

cd ~/code/ga/labs

Create a new Vite project for your React app:

npm create vite@latest

You’ll be prompted to choose a project name. Let’s name it controlled-forms-in-react-lab.

• Select a framework. Use the arrow keys to choose the React option and hit Enter.

• Select a variant. Again, use the arrow keys to choose JavaScript and hit Enter.

Navigate to your new project directory and install the necessary dependencies:

cd controlled-forms-in-react-lab
npm i

Open the project’s folder in your code editor:

code .

Configuring ESLint

Before we begin, we need to adjust the ESLint configuration. Add the indicated rules to the rules object in your eslint.config.js file:

    rules: {
      ...js.configs.recommended.rules,
      ...react.configs.recommended.rules,
      ...react.configs['jsx-runtime'].rules,
      ...reactHooks.configs.recommended.rules,
      'react/jsx-no-target-blank': 'off',
      'react-refresh/only-export-components': [
        'warn',
        { allowConstantExport: true },
      ],
      'react/prop-types': 'off', // add this line
      'react/no-unescaped-entities': 'off', // add this line
    },

The first addition prevents warnings if you don’t declare types for your props (which we’re not), and the second prevents warnings if you use contractions within JSX.

Clear App.jsx

Open the App.jsx file in the src directory and replace the contents of it with the following:

// src/App.jsx

const App = () => {
  return <h1>Hello world!</h1>;
};

export default App;

Starter CSS

Before getting started, add the following style rules to index.css:

First, change the existing style rules for body to this:

body {
  margin: 0;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
  min-width: 100vw;
  min-height: 100vh;
}

Then, add these rules above the @media rule:

form {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  width: 90%;
}

input {
  padding: 5px;
}

.bookshelfDiv {
  padding: 10px;
  width: 80%;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
}

.formDiv {
  width: 60%;
  border: 1px solid white;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
  padding: 20px;
}

.bookCardsDiv {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  width: 90%;
  margin-top: 20px;
}

.bookCard {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
  flex-direction: column;
  border: 1px solid white;
  padding: 5px;
  width: 40%;
  margin: 15px 10px;
  background-color: rgb(155, 155, 155);
  color: black;
}

Running the development server

To start the development server and view our app in the browser, we’ll use the following command:

npm run dev

You should see that Vite is available on port number 5173:

localhost:5173

GitHub setup

To add this project to GitHub, initialize a Git repository:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "init commit"

Make a new repository on GitHub named controlled-forms-in-react-lab.

Link your local project to your remote GitHub repo:

git remote add origin https://github.com/<github-username>/controlled-forms-in-react-lab.git
git push origin main

🚨 Do not copy the above command. It will not work. Your GitHub username will replace <github-username> (including the < and >) in the URL above.