XFDL to XForms

Hi,

I’m using IBM Workplace Forms Designer tool to create eForms; whose output is an XML syntax called XFDL (eXtensible Forms Description Language), which support the XForms standard. (Ie, certain controls are written in xforms.) I’m running a stylesheet against it to transform the xfdl to xhtml + xforms. I got support from this group to resolve many of the issues related to it. Thanks for all the support.

There are some more issues to be resolved and I request your help in resolving that.

One difficulty I faced during the transformation of XFDL to XHTML using XSLT is that in XFDL, we can set the datatype for an input field, its min length, max length, range etc using a non-xform tag (<format>). Please see the code snippet below. But in xforms, we add this in xforms:model using xforms:bind. So, using XSLT, we need to convert all these constraints in the <format> tag in XFDL to the corresponding xforms:bind attributes in XForms.

<pane sid="PANE1">

         <xforms:group ref="instance('INSTANCE')/PAGE1/details">

            <xforms:label></xforms:label>

            <field sid="fldAge">

               <xforms:input ref="age">

                  <xforms:label></xforms:label>

               </xforms:input>

               <itemlocation>

                  <x>13</x>

                  <y>37</y>

                  <width>101</width>

               </itemlocation>

               <format>

                  <datatype>integer</datatype>      àthis corresponds to type=xs:integer in xforms:bind

                  <constraints>

                     <mandatory>on</mandatory>  àthis corresponds to required=true() in xforms:bind

                     <range>

                        <min>0</min>

                        <max>50</max>   àthis means that the value should not exceed 50

                     </range>

                  </constraints>

               </format>

            </field>

         </xforms:group>

         <itemlocation>

            <x>413</x>

            <y>144</y>

            <width>165</width>

            <height>97</height>

         </itemlocation>

      </pane>

The ‘ref’ attribute of the input field should refer to the ‘ref’ attribute of the xforms:bind. Since its inside a group(xforms:group), the ref attribute that should be bind should contain the full path. The input control can be inside nested groups or repeats. In some cases, the ref attribute of input field can also contain values as “../age”. So we need a generic mechanism where the complete instance path is obtained which can be used in xforms:bind.

I request your help in solving this.

Thanks

Jency

Hi,

I’m using IBM Workplace Forms Designer tool to create eForms; which is written in an XML syntax called XFDL (eXtensible Forms Description Language), which supports the XForms standard. (ie, certain controls are written in xforms.) I’m running a stylesheet against it to convert the xfdl to xforms+ xhtml. I got support from Orbeon group to some extent in implementing this. Thanks for all the support. Still I’m facing some issues in the xsl transformation of xfdl. I request your help in resolving these issues.

One difficulty I face during the transformation of XFDL to XHTML using XSLT is that in XFDL, we can set the datatype for an input field, its min length, max length, range etc using a non-xform tag (<format>). Please see the code snippet below. But in xforms, we add this in xforms:model using xforms:bind. So, using XSLT, we need to convert all these constraints in the <format> tag in XFDL to the corresponding xforms:bind attributes in XForms.

<pane sid="PANE1">

         <xforms:group ref="instance('INSTANCE')/PAGE1/details">

            <xforms:label></xforms:label>

            <field sid="FIELD1">

               <xforms:input ref="age">

                  <xforms:label></xforms:label>

               </xforms:input>

               <itemlocation>

                  <x>32</x>

                  <y>33</y>

                  <width>114</width>

               </itemlocation>

               <format>

                  <datatype>integer</datatype>  à this corresponds to the type=”xs:integer” in xforms:bind

                  <constraints>

                     <mandatory>on</mandatory>  à this is equivalent to required=true() in xforms bind

                     <range>

                        <min>0</min>

                        <max>50</max>       à this means that the value should not exceed 50

                     </range>

                     <length>

                        <min>0</min>

                        <max>2</max>    à this means that the max length allowed is 2

                     </length>

                  </constraints>

               </format>

            </field>

         </xforms:group>

         <itemlocation>

            <x>421</x>

            <y>164</y>

            <width>108</width>

            <height>77</height>

         </itemlocation>

      </pane>

The ‘ref’ attribute of the input control(xforms:input)in the above code should refer to the ‘ref’ attribute of the xforms:bind. But since the input control is inside xforms:group, we need to get the full instance path to refer in xforms:bind. The input control can be in nested groups or repeats.  The ref attribute can also contain values such as “../age”. So, we need a generic mechanism by which we retrieve the complete instance to refer in xforms:bind.

Hope you could help me in resolving this.

Expecting your support,

Thanks in advance

Jency