Newbie in Form Builder and reusing in Application/Portal...

Hi to all,
I'm trying to integrate Orbeon in our project, if the demo will succeed, we can
use as a tool integrated.

I've read all documentation and examples in Orbeon3.6 zip file;
I've already installed orbeon.war with Liferay 5.0.1 on tomcat 5.5 (in this
case I use Orbeon Nightly build);
I've get a little practise with the example portlet, Form builder and example
running applications.

I've just read many posts, such as:
http://www.nabble.com/Form-Builder-Aims.-to17484868.html#a17484868
http://mail.ow2.org/wws/arc/ops-users/2008-05/msg00547.html
http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=17663374&framed=y
http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=17642008&framed=y
http://mail.ow2.org/wws/arc/ops-users/2008-05/msg00547.html

and similarly, this is my use-case:
In a Portal, a user see an "application" page generated with Form Builder,
insert his data and submit this to the other forms, and at the last one, the
output data (via xml) will be used (by a db or servlet or other...);
In another page, the "admin" pourpose: the administrator can make changes to
the page via Form Builder and "on publish" action the page showed "as an
application in the portal" will be updated.
(I know: that comes out from Star Trek).

For example, I'dd like to make a xhtml that fills final xml data just like the
application "xforms-wizard-switch", I have one way: take the view.xhtml and
modify it to obtain my pages; So I can view it in "run application" portlet,
but the problem is :how to put this xform into db and make it editable via Form
BUilder?

1.Now, I understand that a Form Builder page can't be viewed outside Form
Runner, and publishing this page not means to "put as new view.xhtml in his
application folder", but maybe is possible to make a scheduled task that
periodically (nightly?) exports forms from Builder db to the view.xhtml?
2. If is possible, going in resources/apps/fr/page-flow.xml, make a new entry
for "exporting" and writing a new .xpl, and vice-versa, may be a solution? (the
scheduled task obviously make an httpget...)


3.There is any documentation in how-to create my own portlet like the one given
(Orbeon Example Portlet) to run xhtml-based applications? This is needed to
integrate the view.xhtml generated xml to a java application. We do not fear to
open the .war, but no time to do without guidelines...

Thanks for any suggestion
Gianluca


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Gianluca,
I think it sound pretty reasonable, but maybe that's because I like  
Star Trek ;-)

Now you could discuss whether you want to use Form Builder itself  
within a portlet. Maybe it would be easier and wiser to just use it as  
a standalone app.

At the moment, we haven't tried Form Builder / Runner in a portlet at  
all. However we would like to have Form Runner work in a portlet at  
some point, but we haven't tried it yet.
You could pre-process the form, but I would rather just use or adapt  
Form Runner. That will make maintenance of the solution easier IMO.

> 2. If is possible, going in resources/apps/fr/page-flow.xml, make a  
> new entry
> for "exporting" and writing a new .xpl, and vice-versa, may be a  
> solution? (the
> scheduled task obviously make an httpget...)

Something like this, yes: you could create a service that pre-
processes the form and returns it without actually going through the  
XForms engine.

> 3.There is any documentation in how-to create my own portlet like  
> the one given
> (Orbeon Example Portlet) to run xhtml-based applications? This is  
> needed to
> integrate the view.xhtml generated xml to a java application. We do  
> not fear to
> open the .war, but no time to do without guidelines...

We are I think pretty light on the portlets documentation. In fact  
some users have had issues with portlets but we haven't had time to  
focus much on this yet. I think the best we have at this point is this  
page:

   http://www.orbeon.com/ops/doc/integration-portlets

The first thing to do would be to look at the current portlet.xml and  
see what's in there.

-Erik

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Orbeon Forms - Web Forms for the Enterprise Done the Right Way
http://www.orbeon.com/



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