Possible bugs with <fr:repeat> in Form Builder UI.

I have noticed a potential few bugs with <fr:repeat> when it is used in the 3.8.0 Form Builder interface. Obviously, we are not able put the tag in with the UI itself. Still, the grouping feature does work more or less gracefully like a <fr:grid> with a few exceptions when you follow the format from the example Bookshelf form and replace an existing <fr:grid/> with <fr:repeat><fr:body/></fr:repeat> into the source by hand initially.

Here is what I have noted:

1)      You can’t use fr:repeat in the orbeon application/library form as a component to add in other forms. Besides the issue of the origin/template instance which needs to be specified in the model (and how does Orbeon know to bring that across?), it drops the whole element as if it didn’t exist on the end form.

2)      Default bindings (that get reset whenever you use the Validation Settings screen) don’t work well. The xhtml control’s @bind attribute ( <xforms:input bind=”” >) makes it so all of the data is the same for all elements in a column. If you remove it and set the @ref attribute to “./form-instancetag” then it stores properly. The xform:bind tags in the binding section are still important for field types (like Dates) and do work, especially when you take advantage of relative references (“../form-instancetag”) for your validation XPath.

3)      The <fr:body> tag that is required inside the <fr:repeat> seems to crash the metadata retrieval for the form builder summary page and (I think) sometimes makes a “read timed out” error in “Edit Source”.

Attached is an example Orbeon/Library contents that demonstrates most of these issues and a form that tries to use it as a component section.

Thanks for your attention and great work on Orbeon,

Thad Kerosky

Re: Twitter post by @thadk