Product Description
The use of forms on the web is so commonplace that most user interactions involve some type of form. XForms--a combination of XML and forms--offers a powerful alternative to HTML-based forms. By providing excellent XML integration, including XML Schema, XForms allows developers to create flexible, web-based user-input forms for a wide variety of platforms, including desktop computers, handhelds, information appliances, and more.
XForms Essentials is an introduction and practical guide to the new XForms specification. Written by Micah Dubinko, a member of the W3C XForms working group and an editor of the specification, the book explains the how and why of XForms, showing readers how to take advantage of them without having to write their own code. You'll learn how to integrate XForms with both HTML and XML vocabularies, and how XForms can simplify the connection between client-based user input and server-based processing.
XForms Essentials begins with a general introduction to web forms, including information on history and basic construction of forms. The second part of the book serves as a reference manual to the XForms specification. The third section offers additional hints, guidelines, and techniques for working with XForms. Topics covered in the book include:
- creating XForms files in a text or XML editor
- converting existing forms (electronic or paper) to XForms
- collecting XML data from users in a user-friendly way
- reducing the amount of JavaScript needed within browser interfaces
- increasing the security and reliability of your current forms system by combining client-side and server-side checks into a common code base
- creating interactive websites using the latest standard technology
From the Publisher
About the Author
Micah Dubinko serves as an editor and author of the XForms 1.0 W3C specification, where he has participated in the XForms effort since September 1999, nine months before the official Working Group was chartered. He's on WC3's XForms committee, knows XForms inside and out, and often acts as a spokesperson on XForms within the W3C and at conferences. He works in San Diego at Cardiff Software, Inc., as a Senior Software Engineer and Chief XML Architect. Over the last four years he has helped determine Cardiff's technical XML strategy and designed and implemented key XML support across several product lines, as well as worked in Product Management. Micah Dubinko was awarded CompTIA CDIA (Certified Document Imaging Architech) certification in January 2001. Micah is the author of XForms Essentials.
Excerpted from XForms Essentials by Micah Dubinko. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork."
—-Pearl Bailey
"XML lets organizations benefit from structured, predictable documents. Thus, XML breeds forms.
QED."
—-David Weinberger
The previous chapter ended with a look at the simple syntax of XForms. This chapter goes into greater detail on the concepts underlying the design of XForms, as well as practical issues that come into play, including a complete, annotated real-world example.
A key concept is the relationship between forms and documents, which will be addressed first. After that, this chapter elaborates on the important issue of host languages and how XForms integrates them.
More Than Forms
Despite the name, XForms is being used for many applications beyond simple forms. In particular, creating and editing XML-based documents is a good fit for the technology.
A key advantage of XML-based documents over, say, paper or word processor templates, is that an entirely electronic process eliminates much uncertainty from form processing. Give average "information workers" a paper form, and they’ll write illegibly, scribble in the margins, doodle, write in new choices, and just generally do things that aren’t expected. All of these behaviors are manually intensive to patch up, in order to clean the data to a point where it can be placed into a database. With XForms, it is possible to restrict the parts of the document that a user is able to modify, which means that submitted data needs only a relatively light double-check before it can be sent to a database. (One pitfall to avoid, however, is a system that is excessively restrictive, so that the person filling the form is unable to accurately provide the needed data. When that happens, users typically give bad information or avoid the electronic system altogether.)
Various efforts are underway to define XML vocabularies for all sorts of documents. Perhaps one of the most ambitious is UBL, the Universal Business Language, currently being standardized through OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structutured Information Standards). The goal of UBL is to represent all different sorts of business documents—purchase orders, invoices, order confirmations, and so on—using a family of XML vocabularies. XForms is a great tool with which to create and edit UBL documents.
