how to watch for valueChanges on a control within a formGroup under a dynamic formArray

Question

i am new to Angular 2/4 and also to web development in general. I have this form that collects the information of variants of products in a purchase form. I have built a formArray of formGroups of variants as shown in below HTML.

<form [formGroup]="this.purchaseInvoiceItemVariantsForm" novalidate>
    <div formArrayName="variants">
        <div *ngFor="let variant of this.purchaseInvoiceItemVariantsForm.controls.variants.controls; let i = index">
            <div [formGroupName]="i">
                <md-input-container>
                    <input mdInput placeholder="Product Code"  formControlName="productBarcode" class="input--small" [readonly]="this.mode == 'view'">
                </md-input-container>
                <md-input-container>
                    <input mdInput placeholder="Color" formControlName="variant1" class="input--small" [readonly]="this.mode == 'view'" required>
                </md-input-container>
                <md-input-container>
                    <input mdInput placeholder="Size" formControlName="variant2" class="input--small" [readonly]="this.mode == 'view'" required>
                </md-input-container>
                <md-input-container>
                    <input mdInput placeholder="MRP" formControlName="mrp" class="input--small" [readonly]="this.mode == 'view'">
                </md-input-container>
                <md-input-container>
                    <input mdInput placeholder="Purchase Price" formControlName="purchasePrice" class="input--small" [readonly]="this.mode == 'view'"
                        required>
                </md-input-container>
                <md-input-container>
                    <input mdInput placeholder="Sell Price" formControlName="sellPrice" class="input--small" [readonly]="this.mode == 'view'"
                        required>
                </md-input-container>
                <md-input-container>
                    <input mdInput placeholder="Quantity" formControlName="variantQuantity" class="input--small" [readonly]="this.mode == 'view'" required>
                </md-input-container>
                <md-input-container>
                    <input mdInput placeholder="Discount" formControlName="variantDiscount" class="input--small" [readonly]="this.mode == 'view'">
                </md-input-container>
                <button md-icon-button (click)="removeVariant(i)" color="warn" *ngIf="purchaseInvoiceItemVariantsForm.controls.variants.length > 1 && this.mode != 'view'"><md-icon>delete</md-icon></button>
            </div>
        </div>

Now once the user have added say 3 variants, i want to be able to listen to the valueChanges of the formControl "productBarcode" so that i can fetch the color and size details from the database.

Any suggestions how this can be achieved ?

thanks in advance!

Regards, Navin

Answer 1

We could do a version of the valueChanges, which starts listening when the variants-array length is a >= 3. Then we listen to each change in the barcode.

I assume you have a function where you add new controls to your variants array, we could implement it there:

addVariant() {
  // code here for adding control

  // check length   
  if(this.purchaseInvoiceItemVariantsForm.get('variants').length >= 3) {
    // iterate each object in array
    for(let val of this.purchaseInvoiceItemVariantsForm.get('variants').controls) {
      // listen to changes in each barcode, if change, do something!
      val.get('productBarcode').valueChanges.subscribe(data => {
      console.log(val.get('productBarcode').value)
      // do something!
      })
    }
  } 
}

Demo