willCode4Beer

XForms Mojo

I visited what was probably the best presentation in a session on XForms. It was presented by Doug Tidwell, of XSLT fame. It was entertaining and informative.
I was able to find my answer to what is being sent over http during a submission, HTTP PUT. But, since it is a parameter I'm sure get and post are also supported.

One really interesting usage is creating a custom editor for an XML file. The file itself can be used to generate the XFORM.

One of the demos had to perfect circle:
XForm -> XML -> XSLT -> XForm ..........

This has me think, if I can find a java based renderer for xforms, then I could make a universal XML editor as an Eclipse plugin. Considering the amount of xml we have to deal with in the J2EE world, there could be a lot of potential for such a tool.

Links:
http://formfaces.com (uses javascript to interpret xforms in non-compliant (read all) browsers)
http://chiba.sourceforge.net/ (a standard implementation for the server, with HTML fallback)
http://www.orbeon.com/ (extension of Chiba, to make common things easier)

To Investigate:
XForms / Struts integration
- custom tags?
- chiba?
Eclipse Plugin
- with formfaces?


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Labels: xforms, xml, xslt

posted by willCode4Beer @ 7:55 PM