Request: an alternative number control/input

[robincornett]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I am working on converting a widget to be a block. There are a handful of number fields in my widget, but some of them are optional, and some have very large ranges (small or no minimum, very large maximum). The two issues I have are:

• the large range fields are very difficult to manage with the RangeControl slider. You can see the case a bit with the Text Settings font size slider on the paragraph block. A larger range of numbers makes the slider unusable.
• on the RangeControl input, the number is required. If I do not want the number to be required and set the initial value as an empty string, the block won't load because of this error: Error loading block: Invalid parameter(s): attributes

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like to have a NumberControl control with no range slider, and ideally it could accept a blank value.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I've currently got a RangeControl input working with the type set to string instead of number, but the slider is still problematic, so I probably really have to convert it to a TextControl. Either way, I have to add in an extra validation step to cast the value, if given, to an integer. So as an alternative, I can probably work around this, but I still would like a number field that is just a plain number input.

If this is already an option that's available, I apologize--I looked through the handbook list and did not find it.

[chrisvanpatten]

@robincornett TextControl has a type prop, so you can pass number and you'll get an <input type="number">. Then you should be able to pass min, max, and step as additional props, or any other HTML5 number input attributes. Let me know if this helps!

[youknowriad]

Also, you're free to use any React component or self-made React component. Gutenberg just happens to use some and offer them for plugin authors.

[robincornett]

Thank you, I was able to get the TextControl set to a number input. Interestingly, the error about the attributes persists if the field is left empty unless I set it to be a string instead of a number for the attribute type, so it appears that setting the attribute type to number somehow makes it a required field.

[Tofandel]

Yes that's default behavior, an empty string is not considered to be a number, you can try handling 0 or -1 as empty or have a switch control before the input to enable or disable the input