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Default field values

A form designed with all the form fields blank (empty with no values) in the Form Designer, will load  with no default field values. There are several ways to populate your form with default values to assist the user in filling in your form.

In order of precedence, as the form loads (test/use) form fields are potentially populated with default values:

1. Default values entered when the form was created in the Form Designer
2. Values from an XML document(s) sent in the Post request for the form or OnInit.
3. URL parameters appended to the form URL via the  _data URL parameter
4. Values retrieved as the form loads from any Document URIs
5. And finally default values set via Business Rules as the form loads and during use. See Setting default values in rules and using REST Services in Rules for further details.

_data

Form fields can be initialized directly from the form's HTTP URL. You can do this by using the special (reserverd) URL parameter called _data. Below is an example of a form initialized via _data. The syntax for _data is based on Rison. This form was initialized by appending the following to the URL from the form's Share Raw form link URL.

?_data=(EMail2787:'joe@gmail.com',Name:'Joe',Desc:'Please send details',Q:'20')

The form fields are addressed in the _data parameter by their Name property if the control was added from the palette and by the XSD element name if the control was added from data sources. In the example above the form has 4 controls. The control labeled Email Address has the name EMmail2787. The controls labeled Full Name has the name 'Name'. Description is named Desc and Quantity is named Q. See the Form Designer below with the Quantity control selected and you can see that it's name in the Properties Settings is 'Q'.

Here are some examples:

• ?_data=(EMail2787:'joe@gmail.com') sets the value of the control named EMail2787 to joe@gmail.com
• ?_data=(A:'good',B:'bad') sets the controls named A and B to good and bad respectively

URL Template Variables

One common use for _data is in the Form Action Post and the Go to Url, and in the Doc Action Post. You can use Templatized Strings to set the Url parameter values dynamically from the form field values. One example: imagine your form contains a field named 'custName'. &_data=(fname:'{custName}') sets the value of fname to the value in the form field named custName. The value in the form field custName is replace when this _data is interpreted. If the post is to a  form Url and that next form has a field named 'fname' that field will automatically be initialized to the value of 'custName'.

Quoting values

Values such as 02 are converted to numbers and would actually become a 2 rather than 02. If your form does require a 02 rather than a 2 you can quote the value to prevent this conversion. Thus &_data=(customerId:'02') would set the value of the control named customerId to 02. Whereas if you used &_data=(customerId:02) then the value in customerId would be set to 2.

If you are using _data to pass values entered into form 1 to initialize fields in form 2 AND the fields in form 1 are not required (meaning when the form is submitted the fields may not contain values), you must quote the templates. For example if Id is not a required field then this &_data=(customerId:{Id}) will fail when the field has no value. To prevent this failure always use quotes.

Repeat Controls

Initializing repeats requires a special syntax. :!(<value1>,<value2>,etc..!). In the current release Url Templates variables are not supported for repeats.

• &_data=(A:!(one,two!)) expects to find two controls named B (a repeat) and sets them to one and two.

If _data contains more instance of the repeating item then on the form by default, then it will create new items as the form is loading, as if the user had clicked the "+" button.

This membership list form contain a single default empty member item. The controls First Name and Last Name are named fn and ln respectively.

Appending _data=(fn:!(Joe,Liz!),ln:!(Caprio,Smith!) to the form's share URL will cause the form to automatically add a 2nd repeating member and to initialize the first and last names for both members. This form also contains a templatized label in the section control. Notice how the templates are also replaced with the _data values when the form loads.

Time, Date/Time Controls

Initialization data, when using _data, an xml document or Business Rules, should contain a UTC offset to specify a time zone for a time or date/time control in a form. The data will be converted and displayed on the screen in the browser's time zone when the time zone is supplied.

The local time will be converted to and saved in a valid UTC format for a time control and the time portion of the date/time control in the submission XML document.  You may see the time stored with a trailing "Z" or with an offset from UTC time. See Initializing Forms with XML Documents and Viewing XML Documents for further information.

Checkbox Controls

In the current release selecting multiple check box options is not supported via _data. Also when using Url templates only the 1st item from the named template will used.

Unbound Controls

Variables passed into your form via _data need not be bound to actual form fields. Since _data is used as a way to initialize form fields why would you want to do this?

One place this is very useful is in business rules. See the section on templatized URls in business rules for more details. However anywhere that you can use templates in your form: labels, help, hint; display message, etc... the value can either come from the value in an actual form field or from _data values that are not in any way bound to the name of a control.

_formActionUrl, _formActionMethod, _formActionTarget

The Form Action can be overridden by using these special (reserverd) URL parameter. The presence of _formActionUrl overrides any Form Action in the Form Designer by specifying which Url to go to when the form gets submitted.

_formActionMethod is optional and can be set to either "get" or "post". If unspecified it defaults to "get" causing the user to get forwarded to this web page when the form is submitted. If set to "post" it will also post the data to this Url.

_formActionTarget is optional and only taken into account when _formActionUrl is specified. It can be set to one of the values: frame, parent, top. It defaults to Frame if not specified.

When the _formActionUrl parameter is set but no Url is given (i.e. ...&_formActionUrl =&embed=...) the top frame will be closed. It is as if you set Form Action to Close" in the Form Designer.

For example... the Url http://www.frevvo.com/....&_formActionUrl=http://www.google.com, will cause the form to display google.com when it's submitted, even if in the Form Designer you had set the Form Action to be "Display Message" or one of the other options.

onInit/onSubmit

onInit and onSubmit are useful when you need to embed a  form in your own form and you want to programmatically submit the  form and initialize the form with your own document.

The value of onInit must be an in scope javascript function. This onInit javascript function will be called before the form is instantiated. For example &onInit=getData will cause  to call the getData() javascript function. The onSubmit function will be called after the submit button is clicked.

Here is a sample html page an embedded  script tag and an onInit javascript function. The  script tag copied was from the Share dialog and the &onInit Url parameter was appended. Each xml document is placed inside a container element (input, textarea or any other element such as a div) and assigned and xml id. In this example there is a single xml document placed inside a <textarea> tag.

<!DOCTYPE html   
  PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">  
        <head>   
                <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">    
                        /**     
                                Called before the form is rendered in the iframe     
                                Return - docs - [{       
                                                xml: *      
                                        }]    
                        **/    
                        function getData(){     
                                alert('onInit called');     
                                var textarea = document.getElementById('form');     
                                return [{      
                                        xml: textarea.value     
                                }];    
                        }   
                        /**     
                                Called after the form is submitted     
                                Parameters:      
                                        docs - [{       
                                                element:{        
                                                        name: *,        
                                                        namespace: *       
                                                        },       
                                                        xml: *      
                                        }]    
                        **/    
                        function onSubmit(docs){     
                                alert('onSubmit called');     
                                var textarea = document.getElementById('form');     
                                if( textarea )      
                                        textarea.value = docs[0].xml;    
                        }   
            </script>  
        </head>  
        <body>      
         <textarea id="form" name="doc1" rows="4" cols="100">   
             <ns:form xmlns:ns="http://www.frevvo.com/schemas/_07IOYMUdEeCuRePmBeMwTQ" name="Order"> <Item> <Color>Red</Color> </Item> <Item> <Color>Blue</Color> </Item> <Item> <Color>Red</Color> </Item> <Item> <Color>Green</Color> </Item> </ns:form> </textarea> <script xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml src="http://localhost:8082/frevvo/web/tn/nancy.com/user/designer/app/_yVkhYcUdEeCuRePmBeMwTQ/ formtype/_07IOYMUdEeCuRePmBeMwTQ/embed?container=true&resize=true&onInit=getData" type="text/javascript" language="Javascript"></script> </body> </html>

Things to note:

1. The Url parameter &onInit=getData used matches exactly the name of a javascript method in the html page also named getData(). 
2. The xml data is also embedded in the html page in the <textarea> tag.
3. The <ns:form> content came directly from a prior form submission and was copied out of the  submission repository's Documents tab.

This is how the form looks when initialized via the onInit method. The particular form used in this sample has a repeat control. By default this form has a single repeating item. When  initializes the form with repeating data returned from the getData() method it auto creates the additional items. This form also contained a Item Added Rule which is why there is also a value in the Quantity field.