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
A form with a time or date/time control will convert and save the local time in UTC format in the submissons XML document. The time is proceeded by a capital "T" (Time Zone) and followed by a "Z" (UTC timezone) in the submission data for a date/time control, as shown below. Using an XML document to initialize a form with time or date/time controls will work correctly whether or not the timezone is provided. Here is an example of XML code generated for a form with a date/time control in the submissions database.
<?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>
The data will be converted to the timezone of the browser and displayed in the form accordingly the timezone is provided in the XML document.
Navigate to View/Edit Submissions 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.