Angular 4: reactive form control is stuck in pending state with a custom async validator

Question

I am building an Angular 4 app that requires the BriteVerify email validation on form fields in several components. I am trying to implement this validation as a custom async validator that I can use with reactive forms. Currently, I can get the API response, but the control status is stuck in pending state. I get no errors so I am a bit confused. Please tell me what I am doing wrong. Here is my code.

Component

import { Component, 
         OnInit } from '@angular/core';
import { FormBuilder, 
         FormGroup, 
         FormControl, 
         Validators } from '@angular/forms';
import { Router } from '@angular/router';

import { EmailValidationService } from '../services/email-validation.service';

import { CustomValidators } from '../utilities/custom-validators/custom-validators';

@Component({
    templateUrl: './email-form.component.html',
    styleUrls: ['./email-form.component.sass']
})

export class EmailFormComponent implements OnInit {

    public emailForm: FormGroup;
    public formSubmitted: Boolean;
    public emailSent: Boolean;
    
    constructor(
        private router: Router,
        private builder: FormBuilder,
        private service: EmailValidationService
    ) { }

    ngOnInit() {

        this.formSubmitted = false;
        this.emailForm = this.builder.group({
            email: [ '', [ Validators.required ], [ CustomValidators.briteVerifyValidator(this.service) ] ]
        });
    }

    get email() {
        return this.emailForm.get('email');
    }

    // rest of logic
}

Validator class

import { AbstractControl } from '@angular/forms';

import { EmailValidationService } from '../../services/email-validation.service';

import { Observable } from 'rxjs/Observable';

import 'rxjs/add/observable/of';
import 'rxjs/add/operator/map';
import 'rxjs/add/operator/switchMap';
import 'rxjs/add/operator/debounceTime';
import 'rxjs/add/operator/distinctUntilChanged';

export class CustomValidators {

    static briteVerifyValidator(service: EmailValidationService) {
        return (control: AbstractControl) => {
            if (!control.valueChanges) {
                return Observable.of(null);
            } else {
                return control.valueChanges
                    .debounceTime(1000)
                    .distinctUntilChanged()
                    .switchMap(value => service.validateEmail(value))
                    .map(data => {
                        return data.status === 'invalid' ? { invalid: true } : null;
                    });
            }
        }
    }
}

Service

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClient,
         HttpParams } from '@angular/common/http';

interface EmailValidationResponse {
    address: string,
    account: string,
    domain: string,
    status: string,
    connected: string,
    disposable: boolean,
    role_address: boolean,
    error_code?: string,
    error?: string,
    duration: number
}

@Injectable()
export class EmailValidationService {

    public emailValidationUrl = 'https://briteverifyendpoint.com';

    constructor(
        private http: HttpClient
    ) { }

    validateEmail(value) {
        let params = new HttpParams();
        params = params.append('address', value);
        return this.http.get<EmailValidationResponse>(this.emailValidationUrl, {
            params: params
        });
    }
}

Template (just form)

<form class="email-form" [formGroup]="emailForm" (ngSubmit)="sendEmail()">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-12 col-sm-12 col-xs-12">
            <fieldset class="form-group required" [ngClass]="{ 'has-error': email.invalid && formSubmitted }">
                <div>{{ email.status }}</div>
                <label class="control-label" for="email">Email</label>
                <input class="form-control input-lg" name="email" id="email" formControlName="email">
                <ng-container *ngIf="email.invalid && formSubmitted">
                    <i class="fa fa-exclamation-triangle" aria-hidden="true"></i>&nbsp;Please enter valid email address.
                </ng-container>
            </fieldset>
            <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary btn-lg btn-block">Send</button>
        </div>
    </div>
</form>

Answer 1

There's a gotcha!

That is, your observable never completes...

This is happening because the observable never completes, so Angular does not know when to change the form status. So remember your observable must to complete.

You can accomplish this in many ways, for example, you can call the first() method, or if you are creating your own observable, you can call the complete method on the observer.

So you can use first()

.map(data => {
   return data.status === 'invalid' ? { invalid: true } : null;
})
.first();

A slightly modified validator, i.e always returns error: STACKBLITZ

Answer 2

I've been doing it slightly differently and faced the same issue.

Here is my code and the fix in case if someone would need it:

  forbiddenNames(control: FormControl): Promise<any> | Observable<any> {
    const promise = new Promise<any>((resolve, reject) => {
      setTimeout(() => {
        if (control.value.toUpperCase() === 'TEST') {
          resolve({'nameIsForbidden': true});
        } else {

          return null;//HERE YOU SHOULD RETURN resolve(null) instead of just null
        }
      }, 1);
    });
    return promise;
  }