Generating custom-form documents from base-form plus XML?
- by KlaymenDK
Hi all,
this is my first stack overflow, and it's a complex one. Sorry.
My task is to generate custom documents from a basic template plus some XML without having a custom form design element for each case.
Here's the whole picture:
We are building a Lotus Notes (client, not web) application for world-wide application access control; the scope is something like 400.000 users being able to request access to any of 1000+ applications. Each application needs its own request form -- different number of approvers, various info required, that sort of thing.
We simply can't have a thousand forms in a database (one per application), and anyway their maintenance really needs to be pushed from the developers to the application owners.
So instead of custom forms, we'd like to create a generic "template" form that stores a block of basic fields, but then allows application owners to define another block of fields dynamically -- "I want a mandatory plain-text field named 'Name' here, and then a date field named 'Due' here that must be later than today's date, and then ...". I hope this makes sense (if not, think of it as a generic questionnaire application).
I pretty much have the structure in place for designing the dynamic fields (form builder GUI - XML-encoded data - pre-rendered DXL for injecting into a form), including mark-up for field types, value options, and rudimentary field validation instructions.
My problem is generating a document with this dynamic content injected at the proper location (without needing a custom form design element for each case).
Doing the dynamic content via HTML is out. The Notes client web rendering is simply way too poor, and it would be quite a challenge to implement things like field validation instructions, date selectors, and name look-ups.
DXL, on the other hand, would allow us to use native Notes fields and code.
As a tech demo, I've managed to implement a custom form generator that injects the pre-rendered DXL for the dynamic content into a base form; but as I said, we don't want a ton of custom form design elements.
I've tried to implement a way to create a document with the "store form in document" flag set, but once I've created the document from the base form, I can't get DXL access to the stored form design, and so I can't inject my dynamic content.
I know this is not something Notes was ever intended to do. Has anyone ever tried something like it (and gotten away with it)?
Thanks for reading this far.
With a boatload of thanks in advance,
Jan Gundtofte-Bruun
