Wednesday, August 3, 2016

A stable function library for Form Runner

When using formulas or custom components with Orbeon Forms, there is often a need to access information about the current form, such as:
  • What is the current form name?
  • If this component currently running at design-time in Form Builder?
  • Is the form in read-only mode?
  • Is the form data currently valid?
  • Is the last page of the wizard currently visible?
In the past, some of these scenarios were possible by writing XPath expressions which usually accessed the internals of Form Runner. For example the following would return the current form name:
xxf:instance('fr-parameters-instance')/form/string()
Other scenarios were not even reasonably possible. Now, instead, Orbeon Forms exposes a documented Form Runner function library with easy to use functions. You now write the above simply:
fr:form-name()
You can use this function without worrying that it might go away or stop working due to a change in the Form Runner internals, and it is properly documented, alongside the other 27 Form Runner functions we are introducing for Orbeon Forms 2016.2. We plan to add more as we go, with 2 further functions already documented for 2016.3.

We hope you enjoy this feature, which will be available in the upcoming Orbeon Forms 2016.2.

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