Building Responsive Forms with Server Actions
Explore how to build responsive forms in Next.js by using Server Actions combined with the useActionState Hook. Understand how to intercept form submissions to prevent page reloads, manage loading states, handle errors inline, and provide clear user feedback during the submission process. This lesson equips you with skills to create professional and interactive form experiences that run smoothly on the server.
A Server Action can process the submission on the server, but by default the browser still treats the form like a traditional HTML form and triggers a full-page reload.
We don’t need to learn new APIs to fix this. We just need to connect the dots. By wiring our Server Action into useActionState, we essentially “upgrade” the form. We gain the ability to intercept the submission, display pending states (like loading spinners), and handle errors inline, all while keeping the actual logic securely on the server.
Using useActionState with a Server Action
Let’s upgrade our to-do form. In the previous lesson, we used a manual event handler (handleFormSubmission) to call our Server Action. To get the automatic state management benefits we just discussed, we need to replace that manual handler with the useActionState Hook.
We start by marking the file with 'use client' to enable hooks. Then, we import ...