How to programatically submit a <Form> component

[achimkoellner]

Please add documentation on how to programatically submit a

component.
I guess it's about adding a ref and calling submit on it or is there another option?

[levithomason]

Manually call the method that you'd otherwise pass to the onSubmit prop. You should capture your form data in state using form control onChange handlers.

PRs welcome :)

[dvdzkwsk]

Also, unless it's explicitly documented, you should avoid using internal methods of the form (or any other) component. This is because doing so means reaching through what should be an opaque abstraction into internal methods that may change at any time.

So, unless these methods become a formal part of the public API, it's likely best to follow @levithomason 's advice. Furthermore, it's generally bad practice to reach downward through the React tree in order to initiate side effects.

[levithomason]

FWIW, I actually plan to remove the onSubmit handler as it has caused lots of confusion and encouraged bad practice. The current implementation is DOM based anyhow, which just makes it this much worse.