Spring Boot validation with a svelte frontend (part 3)

In the previous installment of this series we created a react application that read the content from our server and allowed editing Club entities via an HTML form.

Here, we will create the same application using a react based frontend that allows us to edit Here, we will create the same application using Svelte.

Creating the client

We will scaffold an empty project with vite:

pnpm create vite

In the options choose

Svelte
TypeScript

Then we add the necessary dependencies

pnpm add  @sveltestack/svelte-query felte @felte/validator-zod \
  @tanstack/svelte-table @zerodevx/svelte-toast \
  svelte-navigator zod
pnpm add -D prettier sass

Now we can already start the dev server and see our generated application:

pnpm dev

We open the browser at http://127.0.0.1:5173/ and are greeted with the scaffolded sample app:

vite sample app

Integrating the router

First we integrate svelte navigator by adding a couple of pages

in client-svelte/src/pages/Home.svelte

<script lang="ts">
</script>

<h1>
    Home
</h1>

client-svelte/src/pages/club/ClubList.svelte

<script lang="ts">
</script>
<h1>Club List</h1>

client-svelte/src/pages/club/SingleClub.svelte

<script lang="ts">
</script>
<h1>Single Club</h1>

client-svelte/src/pages/club/ClubEdit.svelte

<script lang="ts">
  export let id;
</script>
<h1>Single Club Edit {id}</h1>

Now we configure the router in App.svelte

<script lang='ts'>
  import { Router, Route, Link } from 'svelte-navigator'
  import Home from './pages/Home.svelte'
  import ClubList from './pages/club/ClubList.svelte'
  import SingleClub from './pages/club/SingleClub.svelte'
  import ClubEdit from './pages/club/ClubEdit.svelte'
</script>
<Router>
  <header>
    <nav>
      <Link to='/'>Home</Link>
      <Link to='/clubs'>Clubs</Link>
    </nav>
  </header>
  <main>
    <Route path='/'>
      <Home />
    </Route>
    <Route path='/clubs/*'>
      <Route path='/' component={ClubList} />
      <Route path=":id/edit" component={ClubEdit} />
      <Route path=":id" component={SingleClub} />
    </Route>
  </main>
</Router>
<style>
</style>

If we navigate to http://localhost:5173/clubs/1 then we should now see our single club page:

single club page

If you have a dark background still, just empty the app.css file.

Integrating `svelte-query`

Just like in the previous react tutorial we will use svelte-query which is a 1:1 port of react-query.

First we need to add a provider in App.svelte

<script lang='ts'>
...
  import { QueryClient, QueryClientProvider } from '@sveltestack/svelte-query'

  const queryClient = new QueryClient()
</script>
<QueryClientProvider client={queryClient}>
  <Router>
    <header>
  ...
 </Router>
</QueryClientProvider>

To be able to call our apis we define the data model in src/lib/model.ts

import { z } from "zod";

export const ClubSchema = z.object({
  clubName: z.string().min(2).max(150),
  managerEmail: z.string().email().max(200),
  id: z.string().optional(),
});

export type Club = z.infer<typeof ClubSchema>;

and the api methods in src/lib/api.ts

import type { Club } from "./model";

export async function fetchClubs() {
  const result = await fetch("/api/clubs");
  return (await extractJsonOrError<any>(result))._embedded.clubs as Club[];
}

async function extractJsonOrError<T>(result: Response): Promise<T> {
  let body: any;
  try {
    body = await result.json();
  } catch (e) {
    console.error("error extracting error body", e);
  }
  if (!result.ok) {
    const error = new Error("Network response was not ok", { cause: body });
    throw error;
  }
  return body as T;
}

export async function fetchClub(id: string): Promise<Club> {
  const result = await fetch(`/api/clubs/${id}`);
  return await extractJsonOrError(result);
}

export async function updateClub(club: Club): Promise<Club> {
  const result = await fetch(`/api/clubs/${club.id}`, {
    body: JSON.stringify(club),
    method: "PUT",
    headers: { "content-type": "application/json", accept: "application/json" },
  });
  return extractJsonOrError(result);
}

Unsurprisingly, both of these files are an exact copy of the react based version.

One thing missing is the proxy configuration in the frontend that will allow us to connect to the spring backend. Add the following lines to client-svelte/vite.config.ts

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [react()],
  server: {
    proxy: {
      "/api": "http://localhost:8080",
    },
  },
});

Loading the club data

As we have all the basics out of the way we can finally load our club list in src/pages/club/ClubList.svelte

<script lang='ts'>
  import { useQuery } from '@sveltestack/svelte-query'
  import { fetchClubs } from '../../lib/api'
  import { Link } from 'svelte-navigator'

  const queryResult = useQuery('clubs', fetchClubs)
</script>
<h1>Club List</h1>
{#if $queryResult.isLoading}
  <span>Loading...</span>
{:else if $queryResult.error}
  <span>An error has occurred: {$queryResult.error.message}</span>
{:else}
  <ul>
    {#each $queryResult.data as club}
      <li><Link to={`/clubs/${club.id}`}>{club.clubName}</Link></li>
    {/each}
  </ul>
{/if}

Now browsing to http://localhost:5173/clubs produces the club list page

While we won’t win any beauty contest with that, it is functional, so let’s move on.

Clicking on a club line will cause the browser to navigate to http://localhost:5173/clubs/395152559210943000 which is currently still an empty page, let’s fix that by changing src/pages/club/SingleClub.svelte to

<script lang="ts">
  import { Link } from 'svelte-navigator'
  import { useQuery } from '@sveltestack/svelte-query'
  import { fetchClub } from '../../lib/api'

  export let id;

  const queryResult = useQuery(['clubs', id], () => fetchClub(id), {enabled: !!id})
</script>
<h1>Single Club {id}</h1>
{#if $queryResult.isLoading}
  <span>Loading...</span>
{:else if $queryResult.error}
  <span>An error has occurred: {$queryResult.error.message}</span>
{:else}
  <ul>
    <li>id: {$queryResult.data.id}</li>
    <li>name: {$queryResult.data.clubName}</li>
    <li>manager email: {$queryResult.data.managerEmail}</li>
  </ul>
{/if}
<Link to={`/clubs/${id}/edit`}>Edit</Link>

This is basically more of the same. We simply load a single club rather than the whole list of clubs.

To edit a club we need to update the src/pages/club/EditClub.svelte page to look like this:

<script lang="ts">
  import { useQuery } from '@sveltestack/svelte-query'
  import { fetchClub } from '../../lib/api'

  export let id;

  const queryResult = useQuery(['clubs', id], () => fetchClub(id), {enabled: !!id})
</script>
<h1>Edit Club {id}</h1>
{#if $queryResult.isLoading}
  <span>Loading...</span>
{:else if $queryResult.error}
  <span>An error has occurred: {$queryResult.error.message}</span>
{:else}
  <ClubForm data={$queryResult.data}/>
{/if}

This is just a carbon copy of the SingleClub.svelte file but we are using the not yet defined ClubForm.

Create the file src/lib/components/ClubForm.svelte with the following content:

<script lang='ts'>
  import { createForm } from 'felte'
  import type { Club } from '../model'
  import { ClubSchema } from '../model'
  import type { ValidatorConfig } from '@felte/validator-zod'
  import { validator } from '@felte/validator-zod'
  import { updateClub } from '../api'
  import { useMutation } from '@sveltestack/svelte-query'
  import { SvelteToast, toast } from '@zerodevx/svelte-toast'

  export let data: Club = {}

  const { form, errors, setErrors } = createForm({
    onSubmit: (values) => {
      console.log('submit form', values)
      doUpload(values)
    },
    extend: validator({ schema: ClubSchema } as ValidatorConfig),
    initialValues: data
  })

  const mutation = useMutation(updateClub, {
    onSuccess: (result, variables, context) => {
      toast.push('Changes Saved')
    },
    onError: (error: any, variables, context) => {
      console.log('mutation error', error)
      const errorDetails = error.cause?.errors
      if (errorDetails) {
        Object.keys(errorDetails).forEach(key => {
          setErrors(key, errorDetails[key].message)
        })
        console.log('got errorDetails', errorDetails)
        toast.push('Saving failed: ' + error.message)
      }
    }
  })

  function doUpload(updatedClub: Club) {
    $mutation.mutate(updatedClub)
  }
</script>

<SvelteToast />
<form method='post' use:form>
  <fieldset>
    <label for='clubName'>Club Name</label>
    <div>
      <input id='clubName' type='text' name='clubName'>
      {#if $errors['clubName']}
        <small class='p-error'>{$errors['clubName'][0]}</small>
      {/if}
    </div>
    <label for='managerEmail'>Manager Email</label>
    <div>
      <input id='managerEmail' type='email' name='managerEmail'>
      {#if $errors['managerEmail']}
        <small class='p-error'>{$errors['managerEmail'][0]}</small>
      {/if}
    </div>
  </fieldset>
  <button type='submit'>Save</button>
</form>

<style>
    .p-error {
        color: red;
    }

    fieldset {
        display: grid;
        grid-template-columns: max-content 1fr;
        gap: 5px;
    }
</style>

If you have already read part 2 of the tutorial then you should be already quite familiar with what is happening here.

If you are new to the series here is a quick explanation.

export let data: Club = {};

We define an input data of type Club here which is passed in by ClubEdit.svelte.

const { form, errors, setErrors } = createForm({
  onSubmit: (values) => {
    console.log("submit form", values);
    doUpload(values);
  },
  extend: validator({ schema: ClubSchema } as ValidatorConfig),
  initialValues: data,
});

Now we define a felte form that uses the zod validator for ensuring our data is valid.

const mutation = useMutation(updateClub, {
  onSuccess: (result, variables, context) => {
    toast.push("Changes Saved");
  },
  onError: (error: any, variables, context) => {
    console.log("mutation error", error);
    const errorDetails = error.cause?.errors;
    if (errorDetails) {
      Object.keys(errorDetails).forEach((key) => {
        setErrors(key, errorDetails[key].message);
      });
      console.log("got errorDetails", errorDetails);
      toast.push("Saving failed: " + error.message);
    }
  },
});

This is the mutation that will upload all changes to the server. If we encounter an error we parse the error response to figure out which field had which problem and use setErrors to populate the client validation errors.

In addition we show a toast message that saving has failed.

function doUpload(updatedClub: Club) {
  $mutation.mutate(updatedClub);
}

The doUpload method is super trivial. This is being called after a successful validation by felte and only triggers the mutation.

<SvelteToast />
<form method='post' use:form>
  <fieldset>
    <label for='clubName'>Club Name</label>
    <div>
      <input id='clubName' type='text' name='clubName'>
      {#if $errors['clubName']}
        <small class='p-error'>{$errors['clubName'][0]}</small>
      {/if}
    </div>
    <label for='managerEmail'>Manager Email</label>
    <div>
      <input id='managerEmail' type='email' name='managerEmail'>
      {#if $errors['managerEmail']}
        <small class='p-error'>{$errors['managerEmail'][0]}</small>
      {/if}
    </div>
  </fieldset>
  <button type='submit'>Save</button>
</form>

The UI part is very simple. All we need to do is define the input and label fields and if we have an error, then we display an error annotation.

If we now enter a invalid data, then we should immediately see the validation errors in the form:

client side validation errors

Testing server side validation errors

Now if you remember the zod validation we created way back when, you might notice that there is a discrepancy between the minimum length in typescript

export const ClubSchema = z.object({
  clubName: z.string().min(2).max(150),

and the corresponding java code

public class Club {
    ...
    @Column
    @NotBlank
    @Length(min = 3, max = 150)
    String clubName;

To be able to produce a server side validation error all we need to do is to update a club and assign it a clubName that is only 2 characters long. The server side validation errors are rendered in-line just like client side validation errors would. server-side validation errors

This concludes part 3 of the tutorial, check out the next article in the series about sorting and paging.

You can find the code to this tutorial at https://github.com/rburgst/spring-boot-validation

Creating the client

Integrating the router

Integrating svelte-query

Loading the club data

Testing server side validation errors

Integrating `svelte-query`