@ministryofjustice/fb-components

@ministryofjustice/fb-components

UI components for Form Builder described in JSON Schema with supporting Nunjucks templates and helpers.

Installation

npm i -P @ministryofjustice/fb-components

Overview

Components for Form Builder are described with the JSON Schema vocabulary in discrete JSON files. They are contained in the directory specifications.

Data objects (which satisfy the schemas and are consumed by the Form Builder application) are contained in the directory metadata.

Nunjucks templates and helpers are contained in the directory templates (but note that the template for an individual component is contained in a directory named templates beside the schema for the component.)

JSON Schemas

$id and $ref

Each schema has an $id. Many schemas have one or more $ref attributes. Superficially, both are URIs, but they require additional processing at runtime to resolve.

For instance, the definition for a button component may resemble this schema:

{
  "$id": "http://gov.uk/schema/v1.0.0/definition/button",
  "_name": "definition.button",
  "title": "Button component definition"
}

And that definition may be referenced elsewhere:

{
  "$id": "http://gov.uk/schema/v1.0.0/button",
  "_name": "button",
  "title": "Button component",
  "allOf: [
    {
      "$ref": "http://gov.uk/schema/v1.0.0/definition/button"
    }
  ]
}

But neither the $id nor the $ref URIs resolve to a location accessible with HTTP.

Instead these URIs must be transformed and mapped to the location of the schema, wherever it is.

That location can be determined in two steps:

1. The fragment http://gov.uk/schema/v1.0.0 of the URI should map to the specifications directory wherever @ministryofjustice/fb-components-core is installed or hosted. (The location may be on the file system or at a resource on the internet)

2. The remainder of the URI should be used to compute the path to that particular JSON Schema file, such that /definition/button becomes /definition/button/definition.button.schema.json

While these patterns are internally consistent and the schemas can be validated with some tools, such as AJV, they cannot be dereferenced by other tools, such as JSON Schema $Ref Parser, without an additional processing step.

Circularity and recursion in the JSON Schemas

The schemas are highly referential and some represent tree structures which validators can interpret as circular. Circular references cannot easily be transformed to JSON and the schemas may fail validation, depending on the tool.

Recursion is isolated to schemas which define conditional behaviour, and specifically conditions which can themselves have conditions:

• /specifications/definition/conditional/boolean/definition.conditional.boolean.schema.json
• /specifications/definition/conditions/any/definition.conditions.all.schema.json
• /specifications/definition/conditions/all/definition.conditions.any.schema.json
• /specifications/definition/conditions/exactly/definition.conditions.exactly.schema.json

These conditions are tree structures which can resolve.

About this project

This project combines three deprecated projects:

1. @ministryofjustice/fb-components-core
2. @ministryofjustice/fb-nunjucks-helpers
3. @ministryofjustice/fb-specification