Forms with no submit button

[nareshbhatia]

I am working on a design where the form has no submit button. Each field must submit onBlur. The design rationale is that user should be able to quickly enter the necessary information without having to click a submit button. Each field should perform independent validation. There are no dependencies between fields.

Is this a common requirement? How should I think about it? Treat each field like a form? It appears that react-hook-form is all about coordinating multiple form fields and submitting a single form value on Submit. I don't see any examples of treating each field individually and submitting onBlur.

[KrishnaSaxena108]

Hi @nareshbhatia !!

It’s not very common to design a form with no submit button — most UIs bundle fields together so the user can review before sending. That said, if each field is truly independent, you can just treat them like individual mini-forms: attach an onBlur handler to each input that calls your API with just that field’s value + validation.

react-hook-form is optimized for handling groups of fields and a single submit event. You can still use it for validation onBlur, but if you don’t need cross-field state, a simpler approach is just:

<input
name="firstName"
onBlur={(e) => saveField("firstName", e.target.value)}
/>

So the way to think about it:

If fields are independent → each is its own “form” (manual onBlur handler).
If fields are related → stick with a normal form + submit flow (react-hook-form makes sense here).

Your design is unusual but valid if the use case is quick, independent edits.