Configuration

There are a number of different configuration options to tweak the out-of-the-box functionality in ChameleonForms.

AddServices overloads

ChameleonForms gets registered in Startup.cs within the AddServices method, e.g.:

    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        ...
        services.AddChameleonForms();
    }

There are actually 3 different overloads of the AddChameleonForms method that you can use:

        /// <summary>
        /// Adds ChameleonForms configuration with the <see cref="DefaultFormTemplate"/>.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="services">The service collection</param>
        /// <param name="configModifier">Lambda expression to alter configuration</param>
        public static void AddChameleonForms(this IServiceCollection services,
            Func<ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<DefaultFormTemplate>, ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<DefaultFormTemplate>> configModifier = null
        ) {...}

        /// <summary>
        /// Adds ChameleonForms configuration with a specified form template and a builder modification delegate.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="services">The service collection</param>
        /// <param name="configModifier">Lambda expression to alter configuration</param>
        public static void AddChameleonForms<TFormTemplate>(this IServiceCollection services,
            Func<ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate>, ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate>> configModifier = null
        )
            where TFormTemplate : class, IFormTemplate {...}

        /// <summary>
        /// Adds ChameleonForms configuration with a specified form template and a builder instance.
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="TFormTemplate">The form template type to register as the default template</typeparam>
        /// <param name="services">The service collection</param>
        /// <param name="configBuilder">The configuration builder to use to specify the Chameleon Forms configuration</param>
        public static void AddChameleonForms<TFormTemplate>(this IServiceCollection services,
            ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> configBuilder
        )
            where TFormTemplate : class, IFormTemplate {...}

The first one (which is used in the above example) adds ChameleonForms with the DefaultFormTemplate as the default template and has an optional property to allow you to tweak the global configuration of ChameleonForms using the configuration builder class. For example that might look like:

services.AddChameleonForms(b => b.WithoutHumanizedLabels());

The other overloads of AddChameleonForms allow you to specify the form template type, which allows you to specify a different default template to use. For example that might look like one of these:

// Just specify the default template type
services.AddChameleonForms<TwitterBootstrap3FormTemplate>();

// 
services.AddChameleonForms<TwitterBootstrap3FormTemplate>(b => b.WithoutHumanizedLabels());

// 
var configBuilder = new ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TwitterBootstrap3FormTemplate>();
// Do stuff with configBuilder
services.AddChameleonForms<TwitterBootstrap3FormTemplate>(configBuilder);

For more information on form templates see:

Default global config

By default, the global config will set up the following for you:

  • Humanized labels: The label text for fields will automatically be "humanized" from the property name using sentence case (e.g. public string FirstName { get; set; } will automatically have a label of First name). See Controlling labels for more information.
    • If any of the following have been applied to a field then the humanization will be skipped: [DisplayName(Name = "Label text)], [Display(Name = "Label text")] or you have an IDisplayMetadataProvider registered that either sets context.DisplayMetadata.SimpleDisplayProperty to a non-empty/non-null string or sets context.DisplayMetadata.DisplayName to a lambda that returns a non-empty/non-null string. For examples see the relevant test.
  • Default form template type: The given IFormTemplate type will be registered as a Singleton with the service collection and will be resolved by default when creating a ChameleonForm. See Form Templates for more information.
  • Flags enum support: Correctly handle model binding and server-side validation of [Flags] enums (including implicit [Required] for non-nullable, which is broken in out-of-the-box MVC). It's expected that they will be posted as multiple values and rendered as a multiple select input (<select multiple> or <input type="checkbox"> list). See Flags Enum Fields for more information.
  • Format-aware DateTime support: Correctly handle model binding and server-side validation of DateTime values with a [DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:SOME_FORMAT}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)] attribute. See DateTime Fields for more information.
  • Enum list support: Correctly handle binding and server-side validation of enum lists (e.g. IEnumerable<EnumType>, EnumType[] etc.). This patches up a range of problems with the out-of-the-box MVC support for enum lists, including poor support for [Required] and erroneous binding of null values in the lists. See Multiple-Select Enum Fields for more information.
  • Uri support: Correctly handle model binding and server-side validation of Uri's. See Uri Fields for more information.
  • Integral number client validation support: Support unobtrusive client-side validation of integral types (byte, sbyte, short, ushort, int, uint, long, ulong). This existed in ASP.NET MVC, but no longer exists in ASP.NET Core MVC because HTML5 type="number" has been added. This is a problem if you don't want to rely on HTML5 validation (which has a sub-par user experience in most cases).
  • Format-aware DateTime client validation support: Support unobtrusive client-side validation of DateTime's that is format string aware. See Client-side DateTime Validation for more information.

Configuration builder

The configuration builder allows you to tweak the default global config using the following self-explanatory fluent methods:

        /// <summary>
        /// Turn off humanized labels.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithoutHumanizedLabels();

        /// <summary>
        /// Humanize labels with the given transformer. Use <see cref="To"/> to access the default Humanizer ones.
        /// </summary>
        /// <example>
        /// builder.WithHumanizedLabelTransformer(To.TitleCase)
        /// </example>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithHumanizedLabelTransformer(IStringTransformer transformer);

        /// <summary>
        /// Don't register the template type with the <see cref="ServiceCollection"/>.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithoutTemplateTypeRegistration();

        /// <summary>
        /// Turn off model binding of flag enums.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithoutFlagsEnumBinding();

        /// <summary>
        /// Turn off model binding of <see cref="System.DateTime"/>s.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithoutDateTimeBinding();

        /// <summary>
        /// Turn off model binding of enum lists.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithoutEnumListBinding();

        /// <summary>
        /// Turn off model binding of <see cref="System.Uri"/>s.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithoutUriBinding();

        /// <summary>
        /// Turn off client model validation of integral numerics.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithoutIntegralClientModelValidation();

        /// <summary>
        /// Turn off client model validation of <see cref="System.DateTime"/>s.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The builder to allow fluent method chaining</returns>
        public ChameleonFormsConfigBuilder<TFormTemplate> WithoutDateTimeClientModelValidation();

MSBuild configuration

When you install ChameleonForms it will automatically include an MSBuild .targets file into your project. This file provides the following functionality:

  • Copy ChameleonForms client-side files into wwwroot/lib/chameleonforms/ on build unless they haven't changed.

    • If you want to disable this simply set the following property in your .csproj file:
      <PropertyGroup>
    <ChameleonFormsCopyContentFiles>false</ChameleonFormsCopyContentFiles>
  </PropertyGroup>

Advanced configuration