Input Bindings

It is very common to need to be able to read the value out of an html input (or textarea, or select) in order to use it (note: it does not need to be in a form!). A possible way to do this is to do it by hand:

class Form extends owl.Component {
  state = useState({ text: "" });

  _updateInputValue(event) {
    this.state.text = event.target.value;
  }
}

<div>
  <input t-on-input="_updateInputValue" />
  <span t-esc="state.text" />
</div>

This works. However, this requires a little bit of plumbing code. Also, the plumbing code is slightly different if you need to interact with a checkbox, or with radio buttons, or with select tags.

To help with this situation, Owl has a builtin directive t-model: its value should be an observed value in the component (usually state.someValue). With the t-model directive, we can write a shorter code, equivalent to the previous example:

class Form extends owl.Component {
  state = { text: "" };
}

<div>
  <input t-model="state.text" />
  <span t-esc="state.text" />
</div>

The t-model directive works with <input>, <input type="checkbox">, <input type="radio">, <textarea> and <select>:

<div>
    <div>Text in an input: <input t-model="state.someVal"/></div>
    <div>Textarea: <textarea t-model="state.otherVal"/></div>
    <div>Boolean value: <input type="checkbox" t-model="state.someFlag"/></div>
    <div>Selection:
        <select t-model="state.color">
            <option value="">Select a color</option>
            <option value="red">Red</option>
            <option value="blue">Blue</option>
        </select>
    </div>
    <div>
        Selection with radio buttons:
        <span>
            <input type="radio" name="color" id="red" value="red" t-model="state.color"/>
            <label for="red">Red</label>
        </span>
        <span>
            <input type="radio" name="color" id="blue" value="blue" t-model="state.color" />
            <label for="blue">Blue</label>
        </span>
    </div>
</div>

Like event handling, the t-model directive accepts the following modifiers:

Modifier	Description
.lazy	update the value on the change event (default is on input event)
.number	try to parse the value to a number (using parseFloat)
.trim	trim the resulting value

For example:

<input t-model.lazy="state.someVal" />

These modifiers can be combined. For instance, t-model.lazy.number will only update a number whenever the change is done.

Note: the online playground has an example to show how it works.