Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

[Suggestion]: Document that useFormStatus works with a preventDefault-ed onSubmit + startTransition

Open Beginner friendly
  • Is something wrong?
#8,682 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Maintainers usually reply within 2 days

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
78/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
javascript, react
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Update the useFormStatus reference page at react.dev/reference/react-dom/hooks/useFormStatus. Read its Returns and Usage sections, then check the linked React PR and ReactDOMForm-test.js cases to confirm the described conditions. Add the pending-state explanation and a short onSubmit/preventDefault()/startTransition example; done when both required calls and the behavior are documented accurately.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

type: documentation
Summary

Document that useFormStatus also reports pending: true when a submit event handler calls event.preventDefault() and starts a Transition with startTransition, not only when the form uses the action prop.

Page

https://react.dev/reference/react-dom/hooks/useFormStatus

Details

I'm implementing a custom <Form> component that accepts a Transition-based prop like submitAction (it validates and transforms the values, then calls submitAction inside startTransition). I wanted to provide the form's pending state through useFormStatus itself, instead of adding a custom context. While investigating, I found that this already works, but because it is not documented, I could not tell whether it is safe to rely on.

The useFormStatus page currently describes the status only in terms of the action prop on the parent <form>. However, since https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/29019 (shipped in React 19.0.0), useFormStatus is also activated when startTransition is called inside a submit event handler that is preventDefault-ed:

After this change, useFormStatus will also be activated if you call startTransition(actionFn) inside a submit event handler that is preventDefault-ed.

The PR describes this as the way for UI component libraries to implement a custom action prop with onSubmit, and the behavior is covered by tests in ReactDOMForm-test.js:

This matters for form components like mine that cannot use the action prop, for example because they validate and transform values before calling the action, or because they do not want the automatic form reset.

I confirmed the behavior with React 19.3.0 in Chrome.

Playground: https://codesandbox.io/p/sandbox/custom-useformstatus-fm2fkl

// App.js
import { startTransition, useActionState } from "react";
import { useFormStatus } from "react-dom";

// A fake request that takes 2 seconds.
function save(value) {
  return new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(() => resolve(value), 2000));
}

// A form component in a UI library. It does not use the `action` prop,
// e.g. because it validates and transforms the values before calling the action.
function MyForm({ submitAction, children }) {
  return (
    <form
      onSubmit={(event) => {
        event.preventDefault();
        const value = new FormData(event.currentTarget).get("name");
        startTransition(async () => {
          await submitAction(value);
        });
      }}
    >
      {children}
    </form>
  );
}

function SubmitButton() {
  const { pending } = useFormStatus();
  return (
    <button type="submit" disabled={pending}>
      {pending ? "Sending" : "Send"}
    </button>
  );
}

function App() {
  const [state, sendAction] = useActionState(async (prev, value) => {
    await save(value);
    return value;
  }, null);
  return (
    <MyForm submitAction={sendAction}>
      <input name="name" />
      <SubmitButton />
      {state && <p>Saved: {state}</p>}
    </MyForm>
  );
}

export default App;

pending stays true until the action finishes, and the form is not reset.

Suggested changes:

  • In "Returns", say that pending is also true while a Transition started from a preventDefault-ed submit event of the parent <form> is pending.
  • In "Usage", add a short example of the onSubmit + preventDefault() + startTransition pattern, and note that both preventDefault() and startTransition in the same event are required.
Dominant language
JavaScript
Stars
11.8k
Forks
8k
Avg merge
2d 31m
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from reactjs/react.dev

All issues in reactjs/react.dev

Similar issues

More JavaScript issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.