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Form

A form that fails well. Give it errors (field name → message) and pass the same message to each field's error. When a submit comes back with errors, a summary opens at the top: how many things need fixing, each a link that takes focus to its field, and the summary takes focus so it's heard first. A native form (noValidate: you validate in onSubmit), whose values arrive as an object.

Feel When it fails, it tells you once, at the top, how many things need fixing, and takes you to each one.

Preview

Or let the agent fetch it: get_component("form") on the Echo MCP server.

Installation

npx echo-ui-cli add form

First time? Run npx echo-ui-cli init once — it sets the project up, and add refuses to run before it.

At a glance

Version
0.3.0
Weight
774 B · 640 B of CSS (minified and gzipped; React not counted)
Keyboard
each problem in the summary is a Tab stop; Enter on it moves focus to that field.

Usage

tsx
import { Form } from "@/echo/form";

<Form onSubmit={save}>{fields}</Form>

Composition

Form → a native form, with a summary (a list of links to the invalid fields) when a submit fails

Examples

The validation pattern

Validate on submit; the same errors go to the fields and the summary.

tsx
const [errors, setErrors] = useState({} as Record<string, string>);
const [tried, setTried] = useState(false);
<Form
  errors={errors}
  showSummary={tried}
  onSubmit={(values) => {
    const next = validate(values);
    setErrors(next);
    setTried(Object.keys(next).length > 0);
  }}
>
  <Field id="email" name="email" label="Email" error={errors.email} />
  <HardwareButton type="submit" variant="primary">Create account</HardwareButton>
</Form>

Accessibility

  • The summary is an alert that takes focus when it opens, so a screen reader hears how many problems there are first.
  • Each problem is a link; following it moves focus to that field.
  • Every field still shows its own message and is marked invalid, so a person who skips the summary finds the problem where it is.
  • Give the form an aria-label and it's listed as a landmark.
  • Keyboard: each problem in the summary is a Tab stop; Enter on it moves focus to that field.

Tested against WCAG 2.2 AA on every release:

  • axe — No axe violations, in the component's own gallery and on its page.
  • keyboard — Every action is reachable and operable from the keyboard alone.
  • focus-visible — Focus is visible on every focusable part, in normal and forced-colors mode.
  • forced-colors — State stays visible when the look's colours are replaced by the system's.
  • target-size — Every target's real hit area is at least 24×24px, at every density.
  • reflow — Content reflows into 320px and survives a doubled text size.

Not covered: screen-reader: not yet verified by a person. Everything above is a machine check; a person has not yet driven this component with a screen reader.

Props

Form props
PropTypeDefault
children requiredThe fields, fieldsets and the submit button.unknown
onSubmitCalled with the form's values by field name; a name used more than once gives an array. The browser doesn't validate (noValidate): do it here.function
errorsField name → what's wrong: from your validation or your server. Pass the same message to each field's own error.Record<string, unknown>
showSummaryShow the summary: true after a submit that came back with errors, false once they're fixed.booleanfalse
summaryTitleThe summary's heading. Default "There's a problem" / "There are N problems".string
aria-labelNames the form, so it's listed as a landmark.string

Anti-patterns

  • Never validate as someone types their first character: validate on submit, then re-check as they fix.
  • Never show the summary without the same message on the field: people arrive at fields, not only at the summary.
  • Never disable the submit button until the form is valid: nobody can find out why it won't go.

Changelog

  • v0.3.0 · 2026-10-12 · AddedThe drawn device (echo-ui-core, echo-ui-cli, every component that draws its own material). A seed's new render setting is molded (Echo as it has always been: plastic lit by one key light) or drawn: the same parts drawn in the ink, the way a spec sheet draws a key. Every part is outlined at one weight (--echo-line, --echo-line-width), hollow on the body; a raised part stands on a hard ink edge as deep as it rises and travels down it when pressed; a recess is an outline drawn inside; something floating stands on a deeper edge. There's no light, so no gloss, no soft shadow and no glow: what a molded device lights (an LED, the rail, a readout, the focus ring, a fader's knob, a radio's pip) is solid ink, and a low-emphasis action is its label underlined. In black and white (the accent the ink) "on" is solid ink and what's drawn on it inverts: a switch's thumb turns paper, a fader's knob is knocked out with a paper ring. The primary key is the paper key that stands highest, on an ink edge twice as deep as a neutral one's, the way a spec sheet draws its CTA. The accent stays the seed's own colour as a flat fill for what's on (a chosen segment, a checked box, a slider's travel, a switch that's on), so an acid highlighter is acid, not the olive a molded device holds it to; what's drawn on it is the ink, or the body when the accent is too deep for the ink. Pressing, travel, sound, what each material is for and every contrast guarantee are unchanged. npx echo-ui-cli style set render drawn turns it on; a style sets it in its seed; the published style and config schemas describe it, and DESIGN.md says how a drawn device builds. A molded device renders exactly as before: every line is 0px wide there, and each drawn value a component reads (--echo-drawn-fill, -on-fill, -ink, -rule, -glass, -hollow, -decoration) is initial, so it falls back to what the component always drew. HardwareButton's bed is the one new hand-tuned shadow: a drawn key stands on its own edge instead of being drawn in a recess.
  • v0.3.0 · 2026-10-12 · ChangedEvery item needs echo-ui-core 0.3.0 (all components). The drawn device, readability past AA and the design tests live in core, and the components that use them are built against it, so each item now declares echo-ui-core >=0.3.0 <0.4.0. Update core with the items: npm install echo-ui-core@^0.3.0 (or your package manager's), then npx echo-ui-cli update. An item whose files didn't change is the same code under a new version; the 0.2.0 files stay published.
  • v0.2.0 · 2026-10-04 · AddedThe light device (echo-ui-core, echo-ui-cli). Echo can be light: a pale chassis makes a device molded in light plastic, like a white calculator or a cream radio, and a dark one makes the device Echo has always been. There's no setting and no mode to switch; the chassis decides (devicePolarity, and values.polarity on the theme). On a light device the page is light: its ground, the well, is the body barely set in. Caps get their own ladder, a step lighter than the body with a lit rim that stops short of white, so they keep their bevel; undersides and seams are shaded darker; dim text moves toward the ground by the same step as on a dark device, and reads about 6:1 on it. Screens are paper glass printed in ink, because a glow on a pale body is a smudge. What's lit (an LED, the current rail) is still the accent, held to 3:1 on every ground, so on is brighter than off; the text it prints (a readout, a count, a current tab) and the focus ring are the accent's ink, a step deeper and held to AA, in the new accent-ink role. The primary cap is the same cap as a dark device's, the accent with a light label: its label is the new primary-cap-ink role, and progress cells, loader dots and a meter's fill, the same plastic, read 3:1 on the page. A neutral cap or a slider that fills with it under its own dark label fills with the new pour-* roles, the accent's pale stops. Shadows are drawn at half their weight, in a deep colour of the body's own hue (--echo-cast-ink) instead of black. Every guarantee holds as it does on a dark device, and the contrast sweep now runs on light bodies too. A dark seed makes exactly the theme it did before, and the new roles equal the ones they stand for there. The components that mixed a recess toward black, painted paper in the text colour or lit a pillow of light with it read the theme's new --echo-shade-ink, --echo-paper-stock and --echo-paper-ink instead, with the old value as the fallback, and a reflective screen reads --echo-screen-*; the components that print a lit label read --echo-primary-cap-ink and --echo-accent-ink the same way; every rail is drawn in the glow, and every focus ring, the ring recipes included, in the ink. style use wears a light style now, and style check says which device a style makes. A dark screen tint on a light body is still refused: one text colour can't serve both, and the theme says so.
  • v0.2.0 · 2026-10-04 · AddedChoosing: Combobox, TagsInput, ChoiceCards, CheckboxGroup, Fieldset, Form and HoldButton. - Combobox: a Select you can type into. multiple keeps choices as tags that bud out of the text line; creatable offers to add what you typed. Built on Base UI Combobox. - TagsInput: free-form tags in Field's well (Enter or a comma adds, Backspace takes the last back, a paste becomes several), with normalize to clean or refuse each one. - ChoiceCards: options that need more than a word, as cards; the chosen one lights a rail and drops its pip. One choice is a radio group, multiple a group of checkboxes. - CheckboxGroup: a named set of checkboxes with an optional parent that shows a dash when only some are on. - Fieldset: a named group of fields with a legend. - Form: fails well. Pass errors to it and to each field; after a failed submit a summary at the top takes focus, counts the problems and links each to its field. - HoldButton: confirm by holding; the cap fills while pressed and drains if let go. A press that can't hold (assistive tech) arms it and a second press confirms.
  • v0.2.0 · 2026-10-04 · ChangedComments only, no behaviour change. Comments in the component source used to cite documents, milestones and ticket numbers from Echo's own planning, none of which exist in your project. The citations are gone and the sentences around them stay. Where a comment was only a citation, it now says what it meant. Three development warnings (HardwareButton's engraved/caption checks and StatusDot's missing-label check) also dropped the ticket code at the end of the message. echo-ui diff will show changes in most items; none of them are to code.
  • v0.2.0 · 2026-10-04 · ChangedAn item's version is now a function of declared data, not of how the changelog is formatted. The version an item ships under is published once and never rewritten, and it used to be inferred from prose: a regex for a bolded "Breaking" run across the whole unreleased section, and attribution by "does a bullet mention this name in backticks". One breaking entry therefore moved every item that changed that cycle, and an entry explaining that "Menu and Sheet are unchanged here" filed itself as a change to Menu and Sheet — which it really had.
  • v0.2.0 · 2026-10-04 · ChangedThe agent brief says Echo has not shipped. llms.txt and the MCP server's instructions led with npx echo-ui-cli init, and that name on npm is a reserved stub with no executable — so a model following the brief wrote an install step that fails with npx's own error. The brief now opens with the caveat, and the docs carry it on every surface that shows a command. One switch (CLI_RELEASED) silences all of them at launch, and a test refuses to let one move without the others. Affects all components only in what the brief says about installing them; no item's props, CSS or rendered semantics change.
  • v0.2.0 · 2026-10-04 · ChangedEcho's home is echo-ui.com. The registry, the docs and the packages all move to it from echo.nawwara.studio. Nothing was published under the old host, so no echo.json anywhere points at it and there is nothing to migrate — this is the last release where that is true.
  • v0.2.0 · 2026-10-04 · ChangedWeights, line heights, letter-spacing, z-index, border widths and icon sizes come from the theme scales in all components, with the old value as a fallback, so components keep working with echo-ui-core@0.0.1. Strays moved to the nearest step: most by under a pixel; HardwareButton icons are 14/16/20px (were 15/17/19).
  • v0.2.0 · 2026-10-04 · FixedContent now reflows into a 320px screen (400% zoom) and survives a doubled browser text size (WCAG 1.4.10, 1.4.4), across all components. Select's 180px floor, NumberField's readout, Segmented and Steps as flex items, EmptyState's grid columns, and Avatar's fixed-pixel disc all gave way; Panel counts its padding inside a width you set (box-sizing: border-box), so a <Panel style={{ width: 220 }}> is now 220px wide overall rather than 260px.