submission & CRUD operations

Hi,

(...)  In my case, I wish not to
update my instance, but add another instance in that file :
<xforms:submission id="save-submission" ref="instance('news-template')"
method="put" replace="none" action="/exist/rest/db/cgc/news.xml" />

The things is that it crushes everything in that file. How can I update
news.xml ? Can you precise at what node the instance should be stocked ?

you can use xupdate to control what changes should be made to the stored resources. There's an example in the documentation:

http://www.orbeon.com/ops/doc/processors-xmldb#xmldb

Another very good listing of xupdate possibilities (helped me a lot):

http://www.xmldatabases.org/projects/XUpdate-UseCases/

You can use PUT via the REST interface, too, but i think you can't PUT just the chunk that changed or should be added, but you have update and send the entire instance.


florian

Steph,

You can POST an XQuery or XUpdate to eXist directly from XForms.

BTW we are giving a talk on XForms and eXist at the XForms Evening event of the XML 2007 conference in Boston on December 3:

  http://2007.xmlconference.org/public/schedule/topic/15

By then I hope to have some better material than what we have now ;-)

-Erik

Stephane Ruchet wrote:

Thanks Florian for the links!

So to confirm, if you want to just update, you have to go through an xpl processor ?

Steph


Florian Schmitt a écrit :

Hi,

(...)  In my case, I wish not to
update my instance, but add another instance in that file :
<xforms:submission id="save-submission" ref="instance('news-template')"
method="put" replace="none" action="/exist/rest/db/cgc/news.xml" />

The things is that it crushes everything in that file. How can I update
news.xml ? Can you precise at what node the instance should be stocked ?

you can use xupdate to control what changes should be made to the stored resources. There's an example in the documentation:

http://www.orbeon.com/ops/doc/processors-xmldb#xmldb

Another very good listing of xupdate possibilities (helped me a lot):

http://www.xmldatabases.org/projects/XUpdate-UseCases/

You can use PUT via the REST interface, too, but i think you can't PUT just the chunk that changed or should be added, but you have update and send the entire instance.


florian

You can use the eXist REST API:

  http://exist.sourceforge.net/devguide.html#N1021D

This documentation about the oxf:xforms-submission processor is also useful:

  http://www.orbeon.com/ops/doc/processors-submission

In your case, you would do the same directly from XForms.

I think you can use XUpdate via the Rest interface, too. To do so, you have to issue a POST request containing the XUpdate document:

http://www.exist-db.org/devguide.html#N1021D

But to create the XUpdate document, in most cases a XPL would be useful to do the transformation, so there's no great advantage compared to the xmldb processor. For my part, i use the xmldb processor usually.

Erik & Florian,

1.) In your xforms, you have the complete xml file that should get updatet available as an instance. In this case, you can update that instance in your XForms and upload it via the REST interface completely. Here, you don't need a xpl.

I like this idea and this is the one I would like to fulfill. My knowledge of xforms & instances are still limited and I didn't succeed in a working example. I have came up for now to this : a 'news-instance' instance that has all the news that is in the database to be viewed on the page. This is ok. There a 2nd instance, 'news-template', that will have the new "news" that the user wants to enter. At first I thought this would be easy, as the book tutorial shows, but I was confronted to a problem : impossible to remove the element "news" from that instance to only have <item> .... </item>. Then my idea was to first copy this instance in the 'news-instance' instance, and the launch the submission to eXist.


  
      <xforms:instance id="news-instance">
        <news xmlns="">
          <item>
            <subject/>
            <date/>
            <contributors/>
            <content/>
            <comment/>
          </item>
        </news>
      </xforms:instance>
   
      <xforms:instance id="news-template">
        <!-- if I remove <news> I cannot make the right changements for the bind, group and trigger elements -->
        <news xmlns="">
          <item mode="noView">
            <subject/>
            <date/>
            <contributors/>
            <content/>
            <comment/>
          </item>
        </news>
      </xforms:instance>
       
      <xforms:bind nodeset="instance('news-template')">
       <!-- if I remove <news> from news-template, what would be the proper nodeset? Should I replace all the item by instance('news-template') -->
        <xforms:bind nodeset="item" relevant="@mode = 'view'" />
        <xforms:bind nodeset="item/subject" required="true()"/>
        <xforms:bind nodeset="item/date" type="xs:date" />
      </xforms:bind>
   
      <xforms:submission id="save-submission" ref="instance('news-instance')" method="put" replace="none" action="/exist/rest/db/cgc/news.xml" />
      <xforms:submission id="list-submission" serialize="false" method="get" action="/exist/rest/db/cgc/news.xml" replace="instance" instance="news-instance"/>
     
    </xforms:model>   

          <xforms:group ref="instance('news-template') ">
            <xforms:trigger id="addNews" ref=".[item/@mode != 'view']">
              <xforms:label>Add</xforms:label>
              <xforms:setvalue ref="item/@mode" ev:event="DOMActivate" value="'view'" />
             </xforms:trigger>
            <br />
            <br />
            <xforms:group ref="item">
              <xforms:input ref="subject">
                <xforms:label>Subject: </xforms:label>
              </xforms:input>
              <br />
              <xforms:input ref="date">
                <xforms:label>Date: </xforms:label>
              </xforms:input>
              <br />
              <xforms:input ref="contributors">
                <xforms:label>Contributor(s): </xforms:label>
              </xforms:input>
              <br />
              <xforms:textarea ref="content" appearance="xxforms:autosize">
                <xforms:label>Content</xforms:label>
              </xforms:textarea>
              <br />
              <xforms:submit submission="save-submission">
                <xforms:label>Save</xforms:label>
                <!-- Copy first the template-instance in news-instance, then submit -->
                <xforms:insert ev:event="DOMActivate" context="instance('news-template')" nodeset="item" at="1" position="before" origin="instance('news-template')"/>
              </xforms:submit> 
              <xforms:trigger id="cancelNews" ref=".">
                <xforms:label>Cancel</xforms:label>
                <xforms:setvalue ref="@mode" ev:event="DOMActivate" value="'noView'" />
              </xforms:trigger>
            </xforms:group>
          </xforms:group>
        
          <xforms:group ref="instance('news-instance') ">
            <xforms:repeat nodeset="item" id="item-repeat">
              <p>
                <strong><xforms:output ref="subject" /></strong> - <xforms:output ref="date" /> / <xforms:output ref="contributors" />
                <hr />
                <xforms:output ref="content" />
              </p>
            </xforms:repeat>
          </xforms:group>


What do you think ?

2.) Your xforms instance consists only of the the xml part that should be added to an existing xml resource in eXist. Then you have to use the xmldb xpl processor.

Ok, I have made an example and it works great!

You can use the eXist REST API:

  http://exist.sourceforge.net/devguide.html#N1021D

This documentation about the oxf:xforms-submission processor is also useful:

  http://www.orbeon.com/ops/doc/processors-submission

In your case, you would do the same directly from XForms.

I think you can use XUpdate via the Rest interface, too. To do so, you have to issue a POST request containing the XUpdate document:

http://www.exist-db.org/devguide.html#N1021D

But to create the XUpdate document, in most cases a XPL would be useful to do the transformation, so there's no great advantage compared to the xmldb processor. For my part, i use the xmldb processor usually.

Mmmm didn't understand a thing... I am really starting from zero :)! I thought it was possible to do something like this :

<xforms:submission id="update-submission" ref="instance('news-instance')" method="put" replace="update" action="/exist/rest/db/cgc/news.xml" "extracode" />

Regards
Steph