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 created from ' palette controls. The most common method is to connect the XML document to the form via the form's doc action manually set document URls wizard.
On this page:
XML document from Doc URI
The form designer ensures the XML document used to initialize the form 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.
The XML document must also use UTF-8 format encoding.
Time, Date/Time Controls
Time and Date/Time controls can be initialized in a form with data provided by an XML document.
Here is an example of XML code that can be used to initialize a form with date, time and date/time controls. The data will be converted to the timezone of the browser and displayed in the form accordingly if the timezone is provided in the XML document. Initialization data will not be converted and will display as is on the form if the timezone is not provided. See Initializing Forms with Data for more information. Notice in the XML document example below that the time for the date/time control is proceeded by a capital "T" (Time Zone) and followed by a "Z" (UTC timezone).
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<p0:default_format xmlns:p0="http://www.frevvo.com/schemas/_1gjfsLVcEeGncZR5RoaQbQ">
<date>2012-07-09</date>
<time>14:00:00Z</time>
<datetime1>2012-07-09T14:00:00Z</datetime1>
<datetime2>2012-07-09T14:00:00Z</datetime2>
</p0:default_format>
You must specify the _formTz=<tz> parameter appended to the share URL when initializing a form with date, time or date/time controls from an XML init document, the _data parameter or a business rule that uses the rule identifier,form.load. This is because the form server needs to know the timezone in which to return the date and time. Successful initialization cannot be guaranteed if the &_formTz parameter is not supplied. Refer to Initializing Forms with Data for the details.
Time data in a form is always converted from the browser's timezone to a valid UTC format when posted in the form XML document in the submissions database. You may see the time in UTC format with a trailing "Z" (UTC) time or the time value plus or minus the UTC offset. Refer to Viewing XML Documents for more information on the Submissions Database and the XML document.
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 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.