What are the practical differences between template-driven and reactive forms? What are the practical differences between template-driven and reactive forms? angular angular

What are the practical differences between template-driven and reactive forms?


Template Driven Forms Features

  • Easy to use
  • Suitable for simple scenarios and fails for complex scenarios
  • Similar to AngularJS
  • Two way data binding(using [(NgModel)] syntax)
  • Minimal component code
  • Automatic track of the form and its data(handled by Angular)
  • Unit testing is another challenge

Reactive Forms Features

  • More flexible, but needs a lot of practice
  • Handles any complex scenarios
  • No data binding is done (immutable data model preferred by most developers)
  • More component code and less HTML markup
  • Reactive transformations can be made possible such as
    • Handling a event based on a debounce time
    • Handling events when the components are distinct until changed
    • Adding elements dynamically
  • Easier unit testing


Here is the summary of comparision between template driven and reactive forms explained by DeborahK (Deborah Kurata) well,enter image description here


I think that it´s a discussion about code, strategy and user experience.

In summary we change from template-driven approach which is more easy to work with it, to reactive (in model-driven approach) for giving us more control, that results in a better testable form by leveraging a decoupling between the HTML (design/CSS team can work here) and component's business rules (angular/js specialist members) and to improve the user experience with features like reactive transformations, correlated validations and handle complex scenarios as runtime validation rules and dynamic fields duplication.

This article is a good reference about it:Angular 2 Forms - Template Driven and Model Driven Approaches