R4R XForms

Introduction of XForms:

A new technology, XForms, is under development within the W3C and aims to combine XML and forms.XForms allow programmers to gather information from those who visit websites using XML. The purpose of any Internet form is to collect data. XForms use XML to define the data requested and store the input after submission. True to most XML processes, XForm separates the data from the design of the form.XForm follows the same basic syntax rules of all XML languages, but is more complex than just creating a storage container for data. In order to learn to write XForms, you should be familiar with XML, HTML, HTML forms and XHTML.

Separation of concerns:

1.Data model
2.Instance data
3.User interface
 

 

How to start Working With XForms:
Before you may start working with XForms, you should know about the following technologies:

• XML
• XHTML
• CSS
• XML-Schemas
• XPATH

What you need
To create simple forms with XForms you only need a text editor and a web browser with XHTML compatibility. Today we may assume that every browser is compatible to XHTML. To use XForms you may need a special plugin to make it work in your browser. You can find the Firefox Plugin .

If you would like to process the data on a web server, it is recommended to learn a server side scripting language like PHP, JSP, ASP or a .net technology.

Goal Of XForms:

1. Support for structured form data.
2. Advanced forms logic without server round-tripping.
3. Dynamic access to server data sources during form execution.
4. Decoupled data, logic and presentation.
5. Seamless integration with other XML tag sets.
6. Richer user interface to meet the needs of business, consumer and device control applications.
7. Support for handheld, television, and desktop browsers, plus printers and scanners.
8. Improved internationalization and accessibility.
9. Multiple forms per page, and pages per form.
10. Suspend and Resume capabilities

What can I do with XForms that I can't do with old HTML Forms?

XForms can do everything that HTML Forms can do, and then some. In particular XForms lets you:

1.  XForms Check data values while the user is typing them in.
2.  XForms Indicate that certain fields are required, and that the form cannot be submitted without them.
3.  XForms Submit forms data as XML.
4.  XForms Integrate with Web services, for instance by using SOAP and XML RPC.
5.  XForms Submit the same form to different servers (for instance a search string to different search engines).
6.  XForms Save and restore values to and from a file.
7.  XForms Use the result of a submit as input to a further form.
8.  XForms Get the initial data for a form from an external document.
9.  XForms Calculate submitted values from other values.
10. XForms Constrain values in certain ways, such as requiring them to be in a certain range.
11. Build 'shopping basket' and 'wizard' style forms without needing to resort to scripting.

Advantage of XForms:

1. XForms are device-independent.
2. XForms separate content from presentation.
3. XForms send their information to the server in XML format.
4. An elegant Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture.
5. a rich set of user interface controls for handling complex things such as dates, numbers and ranges.
6. compatibility with XML standards such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), XML Schema and XPath.
7. Extensibility.
8. Reusability

Disadvantage of XForms:

1. Early versions of some extensions (such as the FireFox 0.7 extension) do not have a full implementation of all the XForms tags (notably repeat-nodeset).
2.  Advanced CSS-3 features are lacking in Microsoft IE.
3.  Slow performance on very-large forms - forms with over 200 fields sometimes can be slow to load on some older browsers.
4.  Using non-native browser forms players such as XSLTForms require an initial download of around 100K of JavaScript, CSS and XSL files that can be slow, especially over slower dial-up lines. Note that these files are usually cached on the local hard drive so that the second time a form package is used the files do not have to be re-downloaded.
5.  Lack of understanding of XML - Many traditional HTML/JavaScript forms developers are not familiar with XML standards
6.  Few complete working XForms examples and applications exist (a problem which we are trying to correct with this book)
7.  Few high-quality and low-cost GUI forms builder tools exist today (with the exception of IBM's Workplace forms, OpenOffice Forms, Onyx Forms and few other tools)

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