new feature: loading subforms

[Joern Turner]

We have integrated a new feature into Chiba that i consider
interesting to all XForms power users. In our current Chiba 3 branch
we have integrated support for loading subforms into already running
forms by using an extension to the standard XForms <load> action e.g.

<xf:load show="embed" target="targetIdRef">
  <xf:resource value="'mysubform.xml'"/>
</xf:load>

will load the resource 'mysubform.xml', initialize it and embed it
into the current form by replacing the element denoted by @target. All
lifecycle events that normally occur for a form will be fired during
init of the subform to allow proper setup. We've also implemented a
variant of the load action that allows unloading of the form. We're
still evaluating the best syntactical alignment with the XLink
standard to express all use cases but the actual (un)loading code
works quite fine and stable.

Motivation:
we have a project that has to support a very complex schema that
allows hundreds to thousands of combinations of certain structures.
These can even be nested into arbitrary depths. It wouldn't have been
possible to code all those combinations into one form in a static
manner. This would have resulted in forms with ten thousands lines of
markup - not very pratical from a memory usage and parsing time point
of view.

There's still some polishing to do until it's ready for final rollout
but the new load/@show="embed" will be definitely part of the final
Chiba 3 release and IMO improve the scalability and maintainability a
lot.

Comments welcome.

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[Adam Flinton-3]

A nice move. I had considered putting that sort of capability in via my
own code.

Adam


Joern Turner wrote:

> We have integrated a new feature into Chiba that i consider
> interesting to all XForms power users. In our current Chiba 3 branch
> we have integrated support for loading subforms into already running
> forms by using an extension to the standard XForms <load> action e.g.
>
> <xf:load show="embed" target="targetIdRef">
>   <xf:resource value="'mysubform.xml'"/>
> </xf:load>
>
> will load the resource 'mysubform.xml', initialize it and embed it
> into the current form by replacing the element denoted by @target. All
> lifecycle events that normally occur for a form will be fired during
> init of the subform to allow proper setup. We've also implemented a
> variant of the load action that allows unloading of the form. We're
> still evaluating the best syntactical alignment with the XLink
> standard to express all use cases but the actual (un)loading code
> works quite fine and stable.
>
> Motivation:
> we have a project that has to support a very complex schema that
> allows hundreds to thousands of combinations of certain structures.
> These can even be nested into arbitrary depths. It wouldn't have been
> possible to code all those combinations into one form in a static
> manner. This would have resulted in forms with ten thousands lines of
> markup - not very pratical from a memory usage and parsing time point
> of view.
>
> There's still some polishing to do until it's ready for final rollout
> but the new load/@show="embed" will be definitely part of the final
> Chiba 3 release and IMO improve the scalability and maintainability a
> lot.
>
> Comments welcome.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
> Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
> royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing
> server and web deployment.
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects
> _______________________________________________
> Chiba-users mailing list
> Chiba-users@...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/chiba-users
>
>

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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing
server and web deployment.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects
_______________________________________________
Chiba-users mailing list
Chiba-users@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/chiba-users