Initializing forms with XML documents

Forms can be initialized by an XML document. This is most commonly done when the form is created from an XSD data source but can also be used with forms create from Live Forms's palette controls. The most common method is to connect the XML document to the form via the form's doc action manually set [[V4_Designing_Forms#Doc_URI_Wizards | document URIs wizard]].

XML document from Doc URI

The form designer ensure the XML document used to initialize the form conforms is valid for the XSD schema used to create the form. If the XML document is invalid your form will fail to initialize and will display the message "There were problems initializing form".

One example of an invalid XML document is when the XSD contains a repeating element. If minOccurs=3 and the XML document contains only 2 elements then the document is invalid and your form will display the standard error message.

XML document from Post payload

In addition chaining multipe forms together via the Form Action Post with common data sources from XSD as described above, it is also possible to write a servlet or other web code that does a Post request with a form Url to the Live Forms Form Server. This request can also be coded to contain an XML document. If the XML document conforms to and is in the same namespace as one of the form's documents (either from-scratch palette controls or from XSD schema datasource), then the Form Server will use that XML document to initialize the form's fields.