Angular 4: setValue formBuilder empty array

brabertaser19 picture brabertaser19 · May 31, 2017 · Viewed 14.7k times · Source

I have such reactive form:

constructor(...){
  this.form = this.formBuilder.group({
    name: ['', Validators.compose([Validators.required, Validators.maxLength(50)])],
    memes: this.formBuilder.array([
      this.initMemes('TrollFace')
    ])
  });
}

initMemes (name?) {
  return this.formBuilder.group({
    id: [''], name: [name]
  });
}

later i can add some more memes:

addMemes () {
  const control = <FormArray>this.form.controls['memes'];
  control.push(this.initMemes('anyName'));
}

and then if i get form values i get:

this.form.controls['memes'].value - here i have array

But there is a case, when i need this this.form.controls['memes'].value to set to an empty array, how is it possible to do?

If i set it this way:

this.form.controls['memes'].setValue([])

I got error: Must supply a value for form control at index: 0.

what i do wrong?

Answer

AJT82 picture AJT82 · May 31, 2017

EDIT:

As of newer versions, Angular now supports clearing a FormArray with clear():

(<FormArray>this.form.get('memes')).clear();

ORIGINAL:

Tried a few things:reset(),setControl(), but the following was the only solution I found to work that actually resets the whole array to [], other options worked, but they left the formgroups in place, just emptied the values.

So how I got it to work, was to iterate the form array and delete each form group with that particular index in the loop:

const control = <FormArray>this.form.controls['memes'];

for(let i = control.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
  control.removeAt(i)
}

If there is a better way, I'm open for suggestions! :)