Offer public access to the underlying formatter

[MattiSG]

I have this use-case where I create a Cleave (which works no matter what element you give to it), and depending on the element.tagName, I would either use it directly if it's an <input>, or access the underlying formatter through the private .properties.numeralFormatter.
It would be safer for me if this was a public API rather than a private one, which forces me to lock dependencies and double-check on each update.

But really, it seems to me Cleave could keep its ease of setup for <input> while offering an <input>-independent formatting facility, which would bring many other use cases.

A basic implementation could be to offer a formatter getter.
A more complete implementation, to make the constructor more consistent, could make element optional, or maybe passed in as a second function call (attachTo?), after having created a generic Cleave.

Or maybe, if my use-case isn't too specific, natively support formatting on a non-<input> by calling format on the innerText…?

Or maybe this is just out of scope for Cleave, which would be fine. But I would then encourage you to release the formatting library as a separate module 😃

[nosir]

@MattiSG, thanks for proposing the detaching and formatting module idea, that can definitely offer more options for handling the data.

However, as you said, I think it's out of scope of cleave. Cleave focuses on user behaviours, to use Cleave with input is a must thing. That is to keep it easy to understand and integrate(for most of the dev case)

So there won't be any public method exposing for formatters :)

Will close this.
Cheers!

[MattiSG]

👍

[nosir]

Hello @MattiSG, update! 👍
After many years, I finally ditched my originally idea and created a new version of cleave based on your idea.
Here's the update: #723