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Re: Parsing the structure of a form as XML content

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Parsing the structure of a form as XML content
• From: Mitch Amiano <mamiano@n...>
• Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 08:32:42 -0400
• In-reply-to: <3ECDE7EC.1080103@c...>
• Organization: Software Adjuvant
• References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0305171221550.27926-100000@e...> <3ECDE7EC.1080103@c...>
• Reply-to: mitch.amiano@s...
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

At what point does creating entirely new systems using the most antiquated technology become a gratuitous exercise?  I don't mean to slur the posters, as I've had to use a technique similiar to the one described a few years ago.  But this seems to be the case of painting one's self into a corner, or throwing good money after poor practice. 

The forward slash isn't a valid name character. One could maintain a second, hidden form field which contains a simple lookup table of html field names to XPath targets, as in 

field1, param:parameters/input/job-input/x1/

The form is then self-describing, without violating any naming rules. Of course, you still have a problem if you need to have multiple elements as siblings, and need to specify the order, but you can solve that with even more mangling to include parent/child pointers.

Aleksander Slominski wrote:
> 
> hi,
> 
> another possibility is to reconstruct XML instance based on HTML form 
> field names. it is straightforward and in case of nested XML elements 
> they can be described by giving filed names that are hierarchical i.e. 
> simplified XPATH such as <input 
> name="param:parameters/input/job-input/x1/"type="text"value="" /> - such 
> form field names are pretty much self describing :-).
> 
> the main advantage is that such HTML form does not require javascript, 
> DHTML, ... - but it is straight HTML form and can be displayed and 
> processed on pretty much any HTML browser (we generate XHTML to simplify 
> parsing but generated XHTML is 1.0 without any special features).
> 
> for example of how such HTML form may look please see GAPP-WRF at 
> http://linbox1.extreme.indiana.edu:8356/xwsfg
> 
> thanks,
> 
> alek
> 
> Betty Harvey wrote:
> 
>> John:
>>
>>     About 4 years ago, I did an example of what you want to do.
>> The example is available at http://www.eccnet.com/xmledi.  I think
>> you might it useful.
>>
>> Betty
>>
>> On Sat, 17 May 2003, John Stubbe wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>> Hi
>>> I am stuck with a Form parsing problem.
>>> I am building a dynamic form creator system, and my problem is that I 
>>> would like to send the whole structure of the form to a server as XML.
>>> Is this possible? I have tried to make a small example below. Does 
>>> anybody know how I can do this?
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>> <form action="#">
>>> <input type="text" value="someValue" />
>>> <br />
>>> <select>
>>>    <option>value1</option>
>>>    <option>value2</option>
>>>    <option>value3</option>
>>> </select>
>>> <br />
>>> <textarea>Some text form a text area</textarea>
>>> <br />
>>> Check1: <input type="checkbox" name="check1" value="1">
>>> Check2:<input type="checkbox" name="check1" value="2" checked>
>>> Check3:<input type="checkbox" name="check1" value="3">
>>> <br />
>>> radio1<input type="radio" name="radio1" value="1">
>>> radio2<input type="radio" name="radio1" value="2">
>>> radio3<input type="radio" name="radio1" value="3">
>>> <br />
>>> <input type="Submit" value="submit" onclick="alert('submit XML')" />
>>> </form>
>>>
>>> I would like to recive someting like this:
>>>
>>> <?xml verson="1.0" ?>
>>> <form>
>>> <text>someValue</text>
>>> <select>
>>>    <option>value1</option>
>>>    <option selected="true">value1</option>
>>>    <option>value2</option>
>>> </select>
>>> <checkbox name="check1">
>>>    <check value="1">Check1</check>
>>>    <check id="2">Check2</check>
>>>    <check id="3">Check3</check>
>>> </checkbox>
>>> <radiobuttons>
>>>    <input value="1">radio1</input>
>>>    <input value="2">radio2</input>
>>>    <input value="3">radio3</input>
>>> </radiobuttons>
>>> </form>
>>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
>>> Nem, sjov og hurtig chat med vennerne med MSN Messenger  
>>> http://messenger.msn.dk
>>>
>>>
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>>>   
>>
>>
>>  
>>
> 
> 

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: Aleksander Slominski <aslom@c...>

• References:
  • Re: Parsing the structure of a form as XML content
    • From: Betty Harvey <harvey@e...>
  • Re: Parsing the structure of a form as XML content
    • From: Aleksander Slominski <aslom@c...>

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