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Creating a Form Template

Mark Birbeck's picture
Submitted by Mark Birbeck on Thu, 2006-01-19 15:25.

You'll find it easier to create new forms if you have an empty template that you can start with. Many XML editors will allow you to place such a template in a special folder so that it is available as a choice whenever you create a new XML document.

The template that follows is an HTML document that contain XForms; even if you plan to use XForms in some other language--and XForms was designed to make that possible--we would still recommend beginners to get acquainted with XForms within HTML.

To create the template:

  1. Create a new, empty file using your preferred editor;
  2. Paste in the following mark-up:
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html
 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
 xmlns:xf="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"
 xmlns:ev="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events"
 xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
>
  <head>
    <script src="http://lib-xh.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/xH.js" type="text/javascript">/**/</script>
    <title>Empty XForm</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Empty XForm</p>
  </body>
</html>
  3. save the file to a handy location or to your XML editor's templates directory, calling it something like xforms-template.html.

As you can see the document is much the same as an ordinary HTML page, with the following differences:

  • The XForms, XML Events and XML Schema namespaces have been added to the root element:
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html
 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
 xmlns:xf="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"
 xmlns:ev="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events"
 xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
>
  <head>

    We don't always need XML Events and XML Schema, but since this is meant to be a template that you can just use without thinking about it, we might as well add them here.

  • there is a reference to the lib-xh loader script:
        <script src="http://lib-xh.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/xH.js" type="text/javascript">/**/</script>

    This script checks for XForms support on the browser that your users have used to load your form. If formsPlayer is present, that is used, and similarly if the Firefox XForms extension is available, that will be used. The script will also automatically install formsPlayer if the user is running Internet Explorer, and no version of formsPlayer is present.

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