server side modification of in memory form?

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server side modification of in memory form?

Adrian Baker-2
Is it conceivable that an in-memory form session could be
programmatically replaced with a new version of the form?

For example, say I was looking at a form, and some action I took (not
necessarily within the form itself) was intercepted on the server and
resulted in an <xforms:input> being added to the form (not becoming
relevant, actually being added to the markup).

The use case is a WYSIWYG form design gui tool, with the form being
displayed in a live preview pane as it is modified. It's possible to do
this by reinitializing the entire form anew each time with a brand new
request to OPS), but this is a little slow (full page refresh) and it
seems a pity not to utilise Orbeon's asynchronous capabilities.

But I suppose the OPS AJAX engine is designed only to pass value & class
updates back and forth, rather than allowing new (previously unknown)
elements to be added - correct?

Adrian





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RE: server side modification of in memory form?

Richard Braman
I don't know, but I like the idea of a form designer gui tool based on
Orbeon.  I have suggested this idea to Erik before.  It would certianly
push AJAX to its limits if possible, but if the gui was being used on an
internal network or on the server itself, speed shouldn't be that big an
isssue.

-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Baker [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 10:59 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [ops-users] server side modification of in memory form?


Is it conceivable that an in-memory form session could be
programmatically replaced with a new version of the form?

For example, say I was looking at a form, and some action I took (not
necessarily within the form itself) was intercepted on the server and
resulted in an <xforms:input> being added to the form (not becoming
relevant, actually being added to the markup).

The use case is a WYSIWYG form design gui tool, with the form being
displayed in a live preview pane as it is modified. It's possible to do
this by reinitializing the entire form anew each time with a brand new
request to OPS), but this is a little slow (full page refresh) and it
seems a pity not to utilise Orbeon's asynchronous capabilities.

But I suppose the OPS AJAX engine is designed only to pass value & class

updates back and forth, rather than allowing new (previously unknown)
elements to be added - correct?

Adrian







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Re: server side modification of in memory form?

Erik Bruchez
Administrator
In reply to this post by Adrian Baker-2
Adrian,

 > Is it conceivable that an in-memory form session could be
 > programmatically replaced with a new version of the form?
 >
 > For example, say I was looking at a form, and some action I took
 > (not necessarily within the form itself) was intercepted on the
 > server and resulted in an <xforms:input> being added to the form
 > (not becoming relevant, actually being added to the markup).
 >
 > The use case is a WYSIWYG form design gui tool, with the form being
 > displayed in a live preview pane as it is modified. It's possible to
 > do this by reinitializing the entire form anew each time with a
 > brand new request to OPS), but this is a little slow (full page
 > refresh) and it seems a pity not to utilise Orbeon's asynchronous
 > capabilities.

To achieve updating an XForms instance asynchronously, some kind of
polling mechanism would be required in the XForms engine, which would
go check from time to time whether an external update to one of the
instances is available "somewhere". The best way to implement this
would actually be to expose a sort of timer system in XForms. Doable,
but not available now.

As for actually "adding controls", this would be against the current
XForms philosophy. But by using xforms:repeat and relevance, if you
anticipate the possible cases, then you get to something which appears
to be adding new controls.

 > But I suppose the OPS AJAX engine is designed only to pass value &
 > class updates back and forth, rather than allowing new (previously
 > unknown) elements to be added - correct?

No, since in the case of xforms:repeat, the client is actually able to
actually insert and delete things in the user interface. But as far as
randomly adding controls here or there, you are correct.

-Erik




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