Angular 2 Template Driven Form access ngForm in component

You need the ngControl attribute on the inputs you want to check.

<form #frm="ngForm" (ngSubmit)="save(frm)">
   <input [(ngModel)]="user.name" #name="ngForm" ngControl="name"  type="text">
   <a (click)="showFrm()">Show Frm</a>
</form>

and in the component you can access the "frm" variable with

import {Component, ViewChild} from 'angular2/core';
...
@ViewChild('frm') public userFrm: NgForm;
...
public showFrm(): void{
    console.log(this.userFrm);
}

You can't access the frm in the constructor, it's not there at this moment, but in the ngAfterViewInit you can access it.

since Angular 8 or so they have updated the parameters for ViewChild. Currently I need to use this syntax:

@ViewChild('frm', { static: true })userFrm: NgForm;