Thursday, July 14, 2016

An introduction to XForms

The W3C XForms standard offers a great way to define forms. XForms is really beneficial if you want to develop complex forms with many subsections, with complex logic and if, at the same time, you want the result to be long-term maintainabl…
Thursday, July 14, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 0 – Setting up the starting point

Before we can get started using XForms, we need to set up the context. This requires both tools and a starting template.
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 1 - Creating the model

XForms applications are true MVC (Model - View - Controller) applications. First we have to set up the model.
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 2 - Collecting information from the user

The point of every form is to somehow collect information from the user and processing it in some way. Getting started with controls.
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 3 - Making fields required

Almost every form has one or more fields that are required. How do we do that with XForms?
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 4 - Creating logical paths

So far, we have created a form that shows us many fields, but not all fields can possibly be relevant to the user: he either is an individual person or someone representing a company, but not both at the same time.
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 5 - Getting started with validation

At this point, we have a form with logical paths and some fields are required. But we want to do more: we want specific validation on some fields.
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 6 - Expanding the form, exploring other controls

We now have a more or less functional web form. It provides validations (both required fields and fields of a certain data type), and it offers logical paths depending on choices made by the user. Now we will look at some other types of con…
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 7 - Repeating sections

So far, in our example, we have always had just one control each entry; for first and last name, address fields, and so on.
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 8 - Exploring the event system

A very powerful feature of the XForms specification is its provision of an event model. In this section we will take a global look at it just to familiarize ourselves with it. In a later chapter, we will use it to create an elegant wizard s…
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 9 - Prefilling and using information from other sources

So far, our form provides a number of user inputs that are empty (or offer hardcoded selections, for instance the citizen / company dropdown). Now there may be several situations, where we might want to prefill controls with some informatio…
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 10 - Creating a wizard structure

So far, our form has gained in size and dependencies have been created. Now we need to develop some structure to present the form in an attractive and effective way, leading to a higher degree of conversion. As our forms grow in size, it be…
Monday, July 18, 2016

XForms tutorial - Chapter 11 - Creating a summary page

We now have a nice form wrapped in a wizard structure, with visual progress indications and possibilities to navigate back and forth. But customers may want to review the information before they actually submit their application or put in t…