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Discover the evolution of web forms, limitations of HTML forms, and the power of XForms for interactive web services. Learn about XForms processing, data representation, validations, calculations, and dynamic forms. Explore blending purpose and presentation, XML integration with web services, and XForms schema support. Uncover XForms conformance profiles, constraints, actions, and submission info. Help enhance XForms with “Smoke Tests” and check out implementations like X-Smiles, Mozquito, Apache Cocoon, Chiba, and ExFormula. Access authoring tools like Cardiff LiquidOffice for XForms development.
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W3C XForms Micah Dubinko Dave Navarro David Cleary Interactive Web Services;Powerful Client-side Interfaces
A Brief History of Web Forms • 1993: HTML forms • 1994–2000: Nothing happened • Today: XForms
HTML Forms Limitations • Some Assembly Required • <input value=“initial value”> • Primitive Data Representation • Urlencoded? Ugh. • Need Script to do anything… • Validations • Calculations • Dynamic Forms
Interactive Web Services • Some Assembly Required • <input value=“initial value”> • Primitive Data Representation • Urlencoded? Ugh. • Blending Purpose and Presentation • <input type=“radio | checkbox”> etc… • No validations, calculations XML In, XML Out Integration with Web Services; XML Tools Leverage XPath, XML Schema, XSLT, SVG Any Time, Any Place, and on Any Device
How It Works <> XSLT XForms Stylesheet tree XForms Processing <> <> <> <> XSLT Processing Source tree Instance data
XForms Model • Defines the ‘Purpose’ of the form • Includes the following: • Instance Data • Submit Information • XML Schema Information • XForms specific properties and actions • Model and Instance can be synthesized
XForms Instance • Provides template for your data • Provides default or partially submitted data • Can be inline or referenced externally
XForms Schema Support • Full XML Schema can be inline or externally referenced • Schema fragments can be inline • Create user defined datatypes • Instance data can be annotated with type information • Client validates simple types, not structure
XForms Conformance Profiles • Two conformance profiles to support wide range of devices • Basic includes subset of XML Schema datatypes • Full includes complete XML Schema support
XForms Constraints • XML Schema defines static contraints • XForms extends these with ‘computed expressions’ • Evaluated at runtime • Is something relevant or required? • Calculated fields
XForms Actions • Defines common set of behaviors for forms • Based on XML Events specification • Allows event processing without requiring Javascript
XForms Submit Info • Provides How, Where, and What to submit • Multiple models per form • Partial form submission • Default is ‘post’ of XML Instance
Help Make XForms Better! • XForms “Smoke Tests” • Containing Document Schema • http://dubinko.info/xforms/ • Vote For XForms in Mozilla! • http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97806
Try Out XForms • Implementations: • X-Smiles http://www.xsmiles.org • Mozquito http://www.mozquito.com • Apache Cocoon http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/ • Chiba http://sourceforge.net/projects/chiba/ • ExFormula http://sourceforge.net/projects/exformula/ • Authoring Tools • Cardiff LiquidOffice (demo) • http://www.Cardiff.com/xforms/
For More Information… • www-forms@w3.org (subj: “Subscribe”) • http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/ • http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms • http://www.xml.com/ • http://www.xmml.com/ (SVG site) • www.zvon.org/xxl/XForms1.0/Output/ • More?