RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
David said >> Why not write a form generator? I said >> zero administration. I say now: Huh, what was I saying? Paul said >> The only solution I can come up with, is to create a custom tag to generate the custom HTML tags we want from a limited source, and then we get back to: "Why not ignore CF for the most part and just write it in HTML". For the amount of control we want, creating a CSS and using the client side is far more sensible, especially as you can change everything you want! Eric now says >> (I posted after an 8:15PM hockey game - you know the score). What I meant to say was? If you mean using a desktop form generator and post static html forms that can be customized, it won't work because I have dynamic form requirements. ie Member driven, non-technical, web based form (or data structure) creation. If you mean. create an online form generator. yeah that's what I want. And as for performance you could stage or cache the created forms, until someone changes design or structures. I think what I need to do, is build. I have an idea of what I want, just not quite sure how to get there. Thanks Eric rambling noise. I am losing track of the conversation a little bit so bear with me. But my last post was 2:30AM, and this one started back at work at 6:45AM so that's my excuse. I think we are actually in agreement. But I think I need to learn more. I am immature in my thoughts and have grey areas that are filled with black magic. To clarify why I think dynamic form generation is cool, I have two applications in mind. 1.) Member Defined Profiles A Member registration site stores basic profile information. In addition, I want to be able to extend the profiling capabilities to allow the Members to create forms to collect information based on their needs. There is no limit to the number of profiles that can be created for any particular Member. Example: Sports Portal site. Members can join 1.) Sports Interest Groups 2.) Sports Organizations / Leagues etc. Member starts with a basic profile: 1.) MemberID, Email, Password, Reminder, ReminderAnswer 2.) ExtendedProfile (Address, Phone etc.) The Member joins some Sport Interest groups. Hockey and Football say, and the administrators of the sport interest groups might want some profile information. These profiles/personas/forms/pages (whatever) are added to the Members profile, so he can return at any time to edit the information that is offered to the administrators. Later on he joins a league. Additional profile information is required to process the member's registration. this is added as an additional page to his profile. Some notes: for the most part these profiles are Member generated, so there needs to be a tool for the Member to build the pages and structures that are going to hold the information. These are not neccessarily technical people so it needs to be friendly. In my head it would be easiest to simply store the structure somewhere. Form.DTD? XML? and then dynamically render the form when it comes time to collect the data. Store the data as a generic XML packet. Now the extension is that the form can have presentation information stored as well. From: "Paul Johnston" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CF-Talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms... Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 09:28:35 - Both correct, but... There is such a thing as CSS. If you think about it, the most useful thing about HTML is that some of the attributes are defaulted on the client machine. Bear this in mind, and you could easily create a form. BTW a form generator is something that takes some data and generates a form. If I'm not mistaken, creating a structure to hold some data and then generating a form from it is exactly that. The way I see it is that if you want something like this, then you have to create certain basic form types with specific defaults. The best way to do this would be to have a server side process to create the form with various defaults. Here we go into the realms of CSS which is a perfectly good client side technology. Why try and create something that isn't really going to save a huge amount of time. The only solution I can come up with, is to create a custom tag to generate the custom HTML tags we want from a limited source, and then we get back to: "Why not ignore CF for the most part and just write it in HTML". For the amount of control we want, creating a CSS and using the client side is far more sensible, especially as you can change everything you want! I hope that's clear. Paul PS Has anyone created a dynamic stylesheet yet? What I mean is, has anyone made a CFM page that is a stylesheet (and would it be worthwhile?). -Original Message- From: Eric Dawson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 7:11
RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
Both correct, but... There is such a thing as CSS. If you think about it, the most useful thing about HTML is that some of the attributes are defaulted on the client machine. Bear this in mind, and you could easily create a form. BTW a form generator is something that takes some data and generates a form. If I'm not mistaken, creating a structure to hold some data and then generating a form from it is exactly that. The way I see it is that if you want something like this, then you have to create certain basic form types with specific defaults. The best way to do this would be to have a server side process to create the form with various defaults. Here we go into the realms of CSS which is a perfectly good client side technology. Why try and create something that isn't really going to save a huge amount of time. The only solution I can come up with, is to create a custom tag to generate the custom HTML tags we want from a limited source, and then we get back to: "Why not ignore CF for the most part and just write it in HTML". For the amount of control we want, creating a CSS and using the client side is far more sensible, especially as you can change everything you want! I hope that's clear. Paul PS Has anyone created a dynamic stylesheet yet? What I mean is, has anyone made a CFM page that is a stylesheet (and would it be worthwhile?). -Original Message- From: Eric Dawson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 7:11 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms... >>Why not write a form generator? zero administration. just cuz you asked. doesn't mean you can't cashe the generated form. (wait a minute aren't both scenarios "form generators". (i mnow what you mean though). E From: David Cummins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CF-Talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms... Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 10:42:03 +1300 I think a custom tag is going about it the wrong way... extra processing time, limited formatting... Why not write a form generator? Creates the CF code for you, then you just tailor? What would be even better is if its generated code were delimited into sections, and it could detect if you inserted extra code, so if you changed the formatting, you wouldn't lose your custom code. David Cummins Peter Theobald wrote: > > So the real trick is making it extensible so you can use it to lay out a "basic default" form, but override certain things to customize it. > > The design I had worked out didn't assume you only had one field per row. It let you put as many fields as you liked in a row. It would add up the number of fields on each row, multiply them all for a "common" denominator, and use that as the number of columns in a table. Each table cell would use rowspan to use up the appropriate space. Everything would come out neat and lined up... ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
>>Why not write a form generator? zero administration. just cuz you asked. doesn't mean you can't cashe the generated form. (wait a minute aren't both scenarios "form generators". (i mnow what you mean though). E From: David Cummins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CF-Talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms... Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 10:42:03 +1300 I think a custom tag is going about it the wrong way... extra processing time, limited formatting... Why not write a form generator? Creates the CF code for you, then you just tailor? What would be even better is if its generated code were delimited into sections, and it could detect if you inserted extra code, so if you changed the formatting, you wouldn't lose your custom code. David Cummins Peter Theobald wrote: > > So the real trick is making it extensible so you can use it to lay out a "basic default" form, but override certain things to customize it. > > The design I had worked out didn't assume you only had one field per row. It let you put as many fields as you liked in a row. It would add up the number of fields on each row, multiply them all for a "common" denominator, and use that as the number of columns in a table. Each table cell would use rowspan to use up the appropriate space. Everything would come out neat and lined up... ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
I think a custom tag is going about it the wrong way... extra processing time, limited formatting... Why not write a form generator? Creates the CF code for you, then you just tailor? What would be even better is if its generated code were delimited into sections, and it could detect if you inserted extra code, so if you changed the formatting, you wouldn't lose your custom code. David Cummins Peter Theobald wrote: > > So the real trick is making it extensible so you can use it to lay out a "basic >default" form, but override certain things to customize it. > > The design I had worked out didn't assume you only had one field per row. It let you >put as many fields as you liked in a row. It would add up the number of fields on >each row, multiply them all for a "common" denominator, and use that as the number of >columns in a table. Each table cell would use rowspan to use up the appropriate >space. Everything would come out neat and lined up... ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
Good point! So if I can allow the user to specify a style sheet, then a lot more comes from it. A couple of problems I am having with it: 1) I don't know what format the user wants for the form (ie is it in a table or not) 2) I can't really say exactly what the defaults should be without a style sheet Although this one could be tackled by telling the user to specify a style for the form and then parsing the data first. This has brought a lot of questions up. The Browser generally uses a style sheet to display the data and most people can't be bothered to change the default style sheet much. Style sheets effectively say what the defaults are (specified by the developer) for the given HTML. Effectively all this kind of system for producing forms would then do is create a table with a form and a specific style sheet. Not saving much time in my view. Development has ceased on this for a while. I may come back to it later. Paul -Original Message- From: Peter Theobald [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 4:05 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms... It would be helpful to allow as much of the formatting as possible to be defined by Style Sheets to make the forms customizable. At 12:30 PM 1/4/01 +, Paul Johnston wrote: >Well, I am enjoying reading your responses. It's very good to get some kind >of feedback (I'll have a look at databaseblocks but I haven't a clue what it >is!). > >The thing I am working on now is to use the database to hold certain >information, and to let HTML default as much as possible. So (using a CF >structure as a v. simple db): > > > > > > > > > >This code would say "Put a text field with the title "Name" (defaults to >name of structure key) into the form with name "tpform". Let HTML handle >the defaults (ie size = 40) or give preset defaults that can be changed, and >the output is: > > > > >Name > > > > > > > > >Simple form with a submit button by default etc... ! May even be sensible to >default all the possible attributes to something and allow the defaults to >be created by the user! > >Then if you add any more structure keys to the structure "tpform.name" (ie >like tpform.name.value) it will insert this to the form as an attribute to >that field. > >Works well for type="text" and type="dropdown" (ie select) and haven't got >much further. > > > >Of course, you can extract the data from a DB or from XML and put it into a >structure format to output the form and then you have a form stored in a >database. > >If you also allow the user to create the table the form goes in... > > > >Don't want to go into detail, but what you can see is that you can produce a >very flexible HTML form system that can be created on the fly from a >database (and therefore produced from a webpage so that a client can create >their own form...) > >Anyway, tell me what you think! > >Paul > >PS The bare bones are there for this, I just haven't uploaded the files >anywhere yet! > >-Original Message- >From: Adam Phillip Churvis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 8:22 PM >To: CF-Talk >Subject: Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms... > > >Take a look at DatabaseBlocks, guys! Download the new Beta we just >uploaded early this morning, not the commercial release (some bugs). > >Enjoy! > >At 03:36 PM 1/3/01 +, you wrote: >>This may sound a little bit odd, but I am surprised that I can't find such >a >>tool. > >--SNIP!-- > >Respectfully, > >Adam Phillip Churvis >Productivity Enhancement, Inc. > >Publishers of the CommerceBlocks line of >modular ColdFusion development tools > >Website: http://www.commerceblocks.com >E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Phone: 770-446-8866 > ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
It would be helpful to allow as much of the formatting as possible to be defined by Style Sheets to make the forms customizable. At 12:30 PM 1/4/01 +, Paul Johnston wrote: >Well, I am enjoying reading your responses. It's very good to get some kind >of feedback (I'll have a look at databaseblocks but I haven't a clue what it >is!). > >The thing I am working on now is to use the database to hold certain >information, and to let HTML default as much as possible. So (using a CF >structure as a v. simple db): > > > > > > > > > >This code would say "Put a text field with the title "Name" (defaults to >name of structure key) into the form with name "tpform". Let HTML handle >the defaults (ie size = 40) or give preset defaults that can be changed, and >the output is: > > > > >Name > > > > > > > > >Simple form with a submit button by default etc... ! May even be sensible to >default all the possible attributes to something and allow the defaults to >be created by the user! > >Then if you add any more structure keys to the structure "tpform.name" (ie >like tpform.name.value) it will insert this to the form as an attribute to >that field. > >Works well for type="text" and type="dropdown" (ie select) and haven't got >much further. > > > >Of course, you can extract the data from a DB or from XML and put it into a >structure format to output the form and then you have a form stored in a >database. > >If you also allow the user to create the table the form goes in... > > > >Don't want to go into detail, but what you can see is that you can produce a >very flexible HTML form system that can be created on the fly from a >database (and therefore produced from a webpage so that a client can create >their own form...) > >Anyway, tell me what you think! > >Paul > >PS The bare bones are there for this, I just haven't uploaded the files >anywhere yet! > >-Original Message- >From: Adam Phillip Churvis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 8:22 PM >To: CF-Talk >Subject: Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms... > > >Take a look at DatabaseBlocks, guys! Download the new Beta we just >uploaded early this morning, not the commercial release (some bugs). > >Enjoy! > >At 03:36 PM 1/3/01 +, you wrote: >>This may sound a little bit odd, but I am surprised that I can't find such >a >>tool. > >--SNIP!-- > >Respectfully, > >Adam Phillip Churvis >Productivity Enhancement, Inc. > >Publishers of the CommerceBlocks line of >modular ColdFusion development tools > >Website: http://www.commerceblocks.com >E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Phone: 770-446-8866 > ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
I have already created something very similar. Right now my app creates the form from a db table and then shows you the created code. At this point you can modify the code and the click 'Create File' and it will create the file with the code you just viewed/changed. I am working on making it more flexible to allow for text formatting and repositioning the form elements. Clint -Original Message- From: Paul Johnston [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 6:31 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms... Well, I am enjoying reading your responses. It's very good to get some kind of feedback (I'll have a look at databaseblocks but I haven't a clue what it is!). The thing I am working on now is to use the database to hold certain information, and to let HTML default as much as possible. So (using a CF structure as a v. simple db): This code would say "Put a text field with the title "Name" (defaults to name of structure key) into the form with name "tpform". Let HTML handle the defaults (ie size = 40) or give preset defaults that can be changed, and the output is: Name Simple form with a submit button by default etc... ! May even be sensible to default all the possible attributes to something and allow the defaults to be created by the user! Then if you add any more structure keys to the structure "tpform.name" (ie like tpform.name.value) it will insert this to the form as an attribute to that field. Works well for type="text" and type="dropdown" (ie select) and haven't got much further. Of course, you can extract the data from a DB or from XML and put it into a structure format to output the form and then you have a form stored in a database. If you also allow the user to create the table the form goes in... Don't want to go into detail, but what you can see is that you can produce a very flexible HTML form system that can be created on the fly from a database (and therefore produced from a webpage so that a client can create their own form...) Anyway, tell me what you think! Paul PS The bare bones are there for this, I just haven't uploaded the files anywhere yet! -Original Message- From: Adam Phillip Churvis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 8:22 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms... Take a look at DatabaseBlocks, guys! Download the new Beta we just uploaded early this morning, not the commercial release (some bugs). Enjoy! At 03:36 PM 1/3/01 +, you wrote: >This may sound a little bit odd, but I am surprised that I can't find such a >tool. --SNIP!-- Respectfully, Adam Phillip Churvis Productivity Enhancement, Inc. Publishers of the CommerceBlocks line of modular ColdFusion development tools Website: http://www.commerceblocks.com E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 770-446-8866 ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
Well, I am enjoying reading your responses. It's very good to get some kind of feedback (I'll have a look at databaseblocks but I haven't a clue what it is!). The thing I am working on now is to use the database to hold certain information, and to let HTML default as much as possible. So (using a CF structure as a v. simple db): This code would say "Put a text field with the title "Name" (defaults to name of structure key) into the form with name "tpform". Let HTML handle the defaults (ie size = 40) or give preset defaults that can be changed, and the output is: Name Simple form with a submit button by default etc... ! May even be sensible to default all the possible attributes to something and allow the defaults to be created by the user! Then if you add any more structure keys to the structure "tpform.name" (ie like tpform.name.value) it will insert this to the form as an attribute to that field. Works well for type="text" and type="dropdown" (ie select) and haven't got much further. Of course, you can extract the data from a DB or from XML and put it into a structure format to output the form and then you have a form stored in a database. If you also allow the user to create the table the form goes in... Don't want to go into detail, but what you can see is that you can produce a very flexible HTML form system that can be created on the fly from a database (and therefore produced from a webpage so that a client can create their own form...) Anyway, tell me what you think! Paul PS The bare bones are there for this, I just haven't uploaded the files anywhere yet! -Original Message- From: Adam Phillip Churvis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 8:22 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms... Take a look at DatabaseBlocks, guys! Download the new Beta we just uploaded early this morning, not the commercial release (some bugs). Enjoy! At 03:36 PM 1/3/01 +, you wrote: >This may sound a little bit odd, but I am surprised that I can't find such a >tool. --SNIP!-- Respectfully, Adam Phillip Churvis Productivity Enhancement, Inc. Publishers of the CommerceBlocks line of modular ColdFusion development tools Website: http://www.commerceblocks.com E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 770-446-8866 ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
Take a look at DatabaseBlocks, guys! Download the new Beta we just uploaded early this morning, not the commercial release (some bugs). Enjoy! At 03:36 PM 1/3/01 +, you wrote: >This may sound a little bit odd, but I am surprised that I can't find such a >tool. --SNIP!-- Respectfully, Adam Phillip Churvis Productivity Enhancement, Inc. Publishers of the CommerceBlocks line of modular ColdFusion development tools Website: http://www.commerceblocks.com E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 770-446-8866 ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
So the real trick is making it extensible so you can use it to lay out a "basic default" form, but override certain things to customize it. The design I had worked out didn't assume you only had one field per row. It let you put as many fields as you liked in a row. It would add up the number of fields on each row, multiply them all for a "common" denominator, and use that as the number of columns in a table. Each table cell would use rowspan to use up the appropriate space. Everything would come out neat and lined up... I hadn't gotten to field validation yet when I put it aside... At 02:28 PM 1/3/01 -0500, Aaron Johnson wrote: >-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- >Hash: SHA1 > >Hey Paul, > >In theory and in some practices, I think this might work, however >they are a number of things that have stood in my way when trying to >do the same thing: > >1) Form layout almost always begs to be different for each site you >do. I personally enjoy a well laid out form. To do layout >programatically would definitely preclude you from making your forms >look nice and well organized (ie: every form would almost have to be >row after row after row of form elements, you would never be able to >have multiple form elements on the same row because they'll all be >different sizes) > >2) Form handling is almost always different. Good forms validate the >data sent to them, checking to make sure a date is a date, an email >is an email, a phone number is a phone number and so on... you can >write custom tags that assist in this, but again, you're going to run >into specialized cases where you'll have write custom code (ie: >custom wants to validate an their proprietary order number is an >order number...) > >Obviously it's up to you to do, and like I said first, in theory, >it's possible. If what you want to create is a simple form creation >custom tag that doesn't do much validation and is laid out in a >similar fashion each time, then by all means go for it... but I can >speak from experience in saying that even big CF shops still write >forms by hand, without a custom tag. > >Aaron Johnson, MCSE, MCP+I >Allaire Certified ColdFusion Developer >MINDSEYE, Inc. >617.350.0339 >617.350.8884 >66172567 >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
RE: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hey Paul, In theory and in some practices, I think this might work, however they are a number of things that have stood in my way when trying to do the same thing: 1) Form layout almost always begs to be different for each site you do. I personally enjoy a well laid out form. To do layout programatically would definitely preclude you from making your forms look nice and well organized (ie: every form would almost have to be row after row after row of form elements, you would never be able to have multiple form elements on the same row because they'll all be different sizes) 2) Form handling is almost always different. Good forms validate the data sent to them, checking to make sure a date is a date, an email is an email, a phone number is a phone number and so on... you can write custom tags that assist in this, but again, you're going to run into specialized cases where you'll have write custom code (ie: custom wants to validate an their proprietary order number is an order number...) Obviously it's up to you to do, and like I said first, in theory, it's possible. If what you want to create is a simple form creation custom tag that doesn't do much validation and is laid out in a similar fashion each time, then by all means go for it... but I can speak from experience in saying that even big CF shops still write forms by hand, without a custom tag. Aaron Johnson, MCSE, MCP+I Allaire Certified ColdFusion Developer MINDSEYE, Inc. 617.350.0339 617.350.8884 66172567 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
I've got in my head to do something similar (from XML). I want to be able to store a complete form in a single database field. The form actually used might be unique to each record. If I ever find time to think it through I will build something. Put me on your mailing list. :) Eric From: "Paul Johnston" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CF-Talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Custom Tag for creating Forms... Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 15:36:22 - This may sound a little bit odd, but I am surprised that I can't find such a tool. At the moment I am in development of a custom tag that will take a CF structure, and create a form from it. Nothing new, except that I intend to give the user control of the output to as great an extent as possible. I have seen custom tags that you can put in fieldnames, and out comes a terrible form (ie no possibility of adding classes field names, or the table is formatted badly). I have also seen custom tags that use a database to hold lots of information and you can do surveys and statistics and everything like that. There isn't a "Take a structure and make a form" kind of tag. The only reason I feel this could be important is that it takes out another bit of UI from the programmer (a bit like using XML) and gives it more to the designed. In other words, you pass in a structure and you get out the form. The other reason it's important is that if you want 40 different forms all emailed to the same place (which is why I'm making it), you can create these forms on the fly and change them all at once (ie if you need to add in a field to every one of them). What do you think? Anyone done this? Do I make sense? Is it just to late in the day (in the UK) and I didn't get enough sleep last night or what? Paul PS I know you can create dynamic forms in various ways. The whole point of this is to provide a common interface (ie a CF structure) to a decent "Form Creator" type of tag. ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
Re: Custom Tag for creating Forms...
I have looked for this for a long time. I started writing my own, but more important things (paying customers) came up... At 03:36 PM 1/3/01 +, Paul Johnston wrote: >This may sound a little bit odd, but I am surprised that I can't find such a >tool. > >At the moment I am in development of a custom tag that will take a CF >structure, and create a form from it. Nothing new, except that I intend to >give the user control of the output to as great an extent as possible. > >I have seen custom tags that you can put in fieldnames, and out comes a >terrible form (ie no possibility of adding classes field names, or the table >is formatted badly). I have also seen custom tags that use a database to >hold lots of information and you can do surveys and statistics and >everything like that. > >There isn't a "Take a structure and make a form" kind of tag. The only >reason I feel this could be important is that it takes out another bit of UI >from the programmer (a bit like using XML) and gives it more to the >designed. In other words, you pass in a structure and you get out the form. > >The other reason it's important is that if you want 40 different forms all >emailed to the same place (which is why I'm making it), you can create these >forms on the fly and change them all at once (ie if you need to add in a >field to every one of them). > >What do you think? Anyone done this? Do I make sense? Is it just to late >in the day (in the UK) and I didn't get enough sleep last night or what? > >Paul > >PS I know you can create dynamic forms in various ways. The whole point of >this is to provide a common interface (ie a CF structure) to a decent "Form >Creator" type of tag. > > > ~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
