XForms Essentials

Organization of This Book

This book is organized into three divisions. The first gives a general introduction to web forms, including information on the history and basic construction of forms. The second section serves as a kind of reference manual to the XForms specification. The third section offers additional hints, guidelines, and techniques for working with XForms.

Chapter 1

This chapter gives a brief history of HTML forms and XForms, the design philosophy behind XForms, and some necessary terminology and concepts.

Chapter 2

Unlike some XML-based languages, XForms is not defined as a standalone document type. This design decision has ramifications that are necessary to understand in order to make effective use of XForms. This chapter discusses issues that come up in the process of defining a markup language (such as XHTML or SVG) that includes XForms.

Chapter 3

XPath is another W3C standard that isn’t used by itself but in concert with other specifications. XForms is a first-class application of XPath, joining the ranks of XSLT and XPointer. This chapter serves as a complete reference to all of XPath, with particular attention to the parts that are most useful in forms or defined within the XForms specification itself.

Chapter 4

XML Schema is another W3C technology leveraged by XForms. This chapter gives an overview of the parts of XML Schema that are important for forms and describes the new datatypes introduced by XForms.

Chapter 5

A powerful feature in XForms is the ability ...