RE: [WEB400] Xforms

["Eric Kempter" <EKempter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The problem is in returning the label of the form field with the error.  For 
instance:

<LABEL><font color="red">*</font>Effective: <input type="date" name="effDate" 
size="10" border="0"></LABEL>

If the Effective date it wrong, it is simple to alert: effDate is incorrect / 
blank or <effDate value> is incorrect but it is substantially more difficult to 
alert: Effective: is incorrect because it is practically impossible to 
consistently retrieve LABEL form field names (in a for loop or otherwise) 
because of the format differences between HTML pages/forms.  You have to drill 
through the BOM.

 -----Original Message-----
From:   web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]  On 
Behalf Of Brad Stone
Sent:   Thursday, October 02, 2003 3:18 PM
To:     Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject:        Re: [WEB400] Xforms

I don't quite follow.  Do you have a for instance?

In cases I could see how you'd want to have similar
programming for fields (for example error checking a
"quantity" type field on 10 different forms would most
likely be the same).

But, with writing "good" javascript and having a set of
base functions, you really don't need to worry if you name
the fields the same on each form.

Ie:

if (!isValidNumber(qty))
and
if (!isValidNumber(quantity))

Are both very simple because you have the isValidNumber
function available to all HTML forms.

You can even take this further writing an isValidQuanity()
function that does:

function isValidQuantity(number) {
  return isValidNumber(number) && isGreaterThanZero(number)
}

I'd much rather do this than worry about parsing XML data
streams from forms, and the added complexity that XML adds
to any web application (which in this type of case I could
say isn't really necessary).  I'm sure there are instances
where it would be nice, but few and far between.

I may have missed what you were trying to say, but I'm all
ears.  :)

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 11:16:33 -0700
 "Eric Kempter" <EKempter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There is a good article on this at xml.com
> http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2001/09/05/xforms.html
> Per the article, upon submit, the instance data is
> serialized as XML and sent to the server.
> 
> What I really like about xforms is that it handles it's
> own error checking.  While you can use javascript to do
> error checking in HTML forms, it is very difficult to
> create a javascript error checking script that can work
> with all HTML forms.  It is practically impossible to
> consistently retrieve LABEL form field names because of
> the format differences between HTML pages/forms.
> 
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