I have to master the same task. I am working in a telephone marketing department and writing the call agent DBs. I will introduce the 3 tier modell and will have to get rid of my formulars (VBA).
We have some static fields (which are always the same -> address & contact person) and some variable (we have different campaigns where the questions to ask will always be different)
I thought about that:
1) select a db (pool) => campaign Example
2) get the static data with <xsl:template match="static"/>
3) get the variable data and put it in a different tag
4) use a transform to create a html form (including validation through JavaScript)
to 4) like that xslt:
<xsl:template match="input/*">
<input>
<xsl:attribute name="type"><xsl:value-of select="name()"/></xsl:attribute>
<!-- -->
<xsl:for-each select="@*">
<xsl:attribute name="{name()}"><xsl:value-of select="."/></xsl:attribute>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="normalize-space(text())!=''">
<xsl:attribute name="value"><xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(text())"/></xsl:attribute>
</xsl:when>
</xsl:choose>
</input>
</xsl:template>
with this xml: <form action="http://www.google.com/search"; name="f"> <input> <hidden name="ie">UTF-8</hidden> <hidden name="oe">UTF-8</hidden> <hidden name="hl">eng</hidden> <text name="q" maxLength="256" size="55"/> <submit name="btnG">Google-Search</submit> </input> <script>document.f.q.focus();</script> </form>
...
King regards Thorsten
Stefan Klein wrote:
Hi all,
I am looking for the quickest way to write database forms. It is something that I will be doing thousands of times, so the goal is to find some really efficient way.
Ideally it would look something like: <table>table name</table> - selects the table
<inputbox ref="field" /> - a simple input field bound to a field in the table
<listbox ref="field" values="table.field" entries="table.field"/> - a listbox bound to a field, entries defines the options visible to the user, values defines what is internally stored in the field. obviously the table would be the same (useful for foreign key entries)
<checkbox ...
The form would be populated automatically with the database values (the current record being selected by a request parameter) and update the values on submit.
What I've been pondering about for quite a while now is what would be the best way to implement this in cocoon.
I looked into the "departments and employees"-tutorial delivered with cocoon2, which is quite close to what I'd like, but still not it. For example I don't like having to define listboxes and populate the form by using separate esql-statements. What data to fill into the form should already be specified in the form definition. My first idea was to start from there and implement a logicsheet that would allow me to define tags like the ones above.
Then I looked into xmlforms and liked them a lot. However: 1. I am still looking for a tag reference. Maybe someone can help out. 2. I am still not entirely sure how they might help me. Surely it would be possible to write a JavaBean that accesses the database, but doing that every time again is not the simplification I am looking for. Is there a way to reference database fields directly from the forms?
Basically, I would be very grateful for any kind of hint you can offer on how to use xmlforms for this or on other ways of accomplishing the task (maybe there would even be ways to take the database description and generate a form from it?). I am quite stuck for ideas, but it seems a standard job so I am sure many people have already found sufficient ways to do it.
Thanks in advance Stefan
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