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Re: Parsing the structure of a form as XML content

• To: mitch.amiano@s...
• Subject: Re: Parsing the structure of a form as XML content
• From: Aleksander Slominski <aslom@c...>
• Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 19:59:40 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <3ECE14EA.3050609@n...>
• References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0305171221550.27926-100000@e...> <3ECDE7EC.1080103@c...> <3ECE14EA.3050609@n...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20030210

Mitch Amiano wrote:

> At what point does creating entirely new systems using the most 
> antiquated technology become a gratuitous exercise?  

hi,

maybe because it works? and works very well meeting all our needs?

> 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. 

it is proof of concept and we are willing to explore alternatives (that 
is why i have posted it). what do you exactly propose?

> The forward slash isn't a valid name character. 

we support both slash and escaped characters: initially we had / as %XX 
however it did not look nice and after checking with HTML browsers it 
looks like slash will work. if we had it deployed to more HTML clients 
we would generate appropriate filed name depending on browser name.

> 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/

this does nor sound simple at all and does not scale for deeply nested 
XML instances: HTML field names are no longer self describing and even 
more: it has layer of indirection that prevents "View Source" editing of 
HTML ...

it is my impression that doing View HTML source and than modifying was 
crucial to success of HTML and Web and as we wanted to make really easy 
to customize HTML forms we wanted to make it easy both to edit by hand 
(or text editor) and using more fancy visual editors - both approaches 
work now fine with HTML code that we generate and that can be used as 
template for better looking HTML page.

> 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.

exactly. this problem and wanting to avoid indirections coded in hidden 
fields ...

thanks for your comments,

alek

> 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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>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
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-- 
"Mr. Pauli, we in the back are all agreed that your theory is crazy. 
What divides us is whether it is crazy enough to be true." Niels H. D. Bohr

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Parsing the structure of a form as XML content
    • From: Mitch Amiano <mamiano@n...>

• 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...>
  • Re: Parsing the structure of a form as XML content
    • From: Mitch Amiano <mamiano@n...>

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