Introduction to W3C XForms

1
Introduction to W3C XForms

• The Future of Web Forms

• Micah Dubinko

2
About Your Guide

• Lead editor of XForms specification
• Software Engineer for Cardiff Software
• Book and magazine articles
• Contributing Editor http//www.xmlhack.com/
• CDIA certified
• mdubinko_at_Cardiff.com
• http//dubinko.info/xforms/

3
What Well Talk About

1. The Big Picture
2. What are XForms?
3. What does it all mean?

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Part 1

• The Big Picture

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A Brief History of Web Forms

• 1993 HTML forms
• 19942001 Nothing happened
• Today XForms

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HTML Forms Limitations

• Some Assembly Required
• ltinput valueinitial valuegt
• Primitive Data Representation
• Urlencoded? Ugh.
• Need Script to do anything
• Validations
• Calculations
• Dynamic Forms

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XForms Interactive Web Services

• Some Assembly Required
• ltinput valueinitial valuegt
• Primitive Data Representation
• Urlencoded? Ugh.
• Blending Purpose and Presentation
• ltinput typeradio checkboxgt 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

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HTML Demo
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Part 2

• What are XForms?

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Terminology

• XForm or XForms?
• XForms Processor
• XForms Model
• Instance data
• Containing document
• Form control

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XForms Conformance Profiles

• Two conformance profiles to support wide range of
  devices
• Basic small devices, TV, phones, etc.
• Full desktop browsers, servers

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Contain This!

• XForms lives in multiple locations within a
  single containing document file

ltheadgt lt/headgt
Purpose (non-visible)
XForms Model
lthtmlgt lt/htmlgt
ltbodygt lt/bodygt
Presentation Form controls
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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

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XForms Instance

• Provides template for your data
• Provides default or partially submitted data
• Can be inline or referenced externally
• Full support for XML Schema

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XForms Constraints

• Static (from Schema) and dynamic
• Datatypes
• Relevant
• Required
• ReadOnly
• Validation
• Calculation
• Minimum/maximum occurrences

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XForms Submit Info
Submit

• Provides How, Where, and What to submit
• Multiple models per form
• Partial form submission
• Default is post of XML Instance

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How It Works
ltgt
Stylesheet tree
XForms Processing
ltgt
ltgt
ltgt
ltgt
XSLT Processing
Source tree
Instance data

• XSLT XForms

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XForms User Interface

• Describes intent
• selectOne, not checkbox
• Input/Secret/Textarea
• selectOne/selectMany
• Range
• Upload
• Button

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Advanced User Interface

• Grouping
• Dynamic interfaces
• Repeating line items
• (similar to Zope)

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Binding
ltheadgt lt/headgt
ltbind idxyz refmemo/cc requiredtrue/gt
XForms Model
ltbodygt lt/bodygt
ltinput bindxyzgt ltinput refmemo/ccgt
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XForms Actions

• Defines common set of behaviors
• No Javascript required
• Message
• SubmitInstance
• SetValue
• SetFocus
• Toggle
• LoadURI

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Processing Model

• Event-driven
• modelInitialize
• Focus/blur, next/previous
• valueChanging/valueChanged
• Help/hint/alert
• Submit/reset
• Error conditions

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Data Submission

• Called Serialization
• Choice of formats
• Application/x-www-form-urlencoded
• Multipart/form-data
• Text/xml
• Choice of transport
• HTTP GET
• HTTP POST
• SOAP (Future)

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Part 3

• What it all means

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Unified Processing
Server
Client
XForms Processor
XForms Processor

• Server process for data double check

• Client process for optimal data entry

XForms Model

• Less CGI hacks better security on the Web

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The end of the Web as we know it
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Any Device, anytime

• High-level form control definitions
• Flexibility in implementation
• No floating point, JavaScript required
• Subset of XML Schema

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Web of Standards
XML Schema
XPath
XML Events
XHTML 2.0
XForms
XHTML 1.x
SVG
FO
?
SMIL
XML
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Section 508

• Accessible web forms for everybody
• Not keyboard-centric
• Events for focus, navigation
• Script not required
• Captions/metadata
• Multimodal forms

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Paperwork Elimination

• Unified format for instance data
• Enables Workflow and Routing
• Documented savings of over 50/transaction

How you gather, manage and use information will
determine whether you win or lose. Bill Gates
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The Web Service Revolution

• User Interface for .NET and Web Services
• Connects directly to SOAP data source
• Utilizes existing XML Schema
• Article available on http//www.xml.com

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XForms Roadmap

• Last Call Ended 22 Feb 2002
• Candidate Recommendation
• Proposed Recommendation
• Recommendation

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Deployment
Pre-1998 1999-2000 2001-2002
2003-2004 2005                       
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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?id97806

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Try Out XForms

• Implementations
• X-Smiles http//www.xsmiles.org
• TIBET http//www.technicalpursuit.com/
• Mozquito http//www.mozquito.com
• Apache Cocoon http//xml.apache.org/cocoon/
• Chiba http//sourceforge.net/projects/chiba/
• ExFormula http//sourceforge.net/projects/exformul
  a/
• Authoring Tools
• Cardiff LiquidOffice (demo)
• http//www.Cardiff.com/xforms/

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For More Information

• www-forms_at_w3.org (subj Subscribe)
• http//www.w3.org/TR/xforms/
• http//www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms
• www.zvon.org/xxl/XForms1.0/Output/
• More?