This document is also available in these non-normative formats: single HTML file, diff-marked HTML, Zip archive.
Copyright © 2003 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use, and software licensing rules apply.
XForms is an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. By splitting traditional XHTML forms into three parts—XForms model, instance data, and user interface—it separates presentation from content, allows reuse, gives strong typing—reducing the number of round-trips to the server, as well as offering device independence and a reduced need for scripting.
XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML or SVG.
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. The latest status of this document series is maintained at the W3C.
This document is the W3C Proposed Recommendation of the XForms 1.0 specification. The XForms Working Group believes XForms 1.0 has been widely reviewed by the community, developers and other W3C groups.
The XForms Basic Profile which appeared in previous Working Drafts is removed from this document as it did not meet the Candidate Recommendation exit criteria. It is still in progress and will be published as a separate document.
W3C Advisory Committee Representatives are invited to send formal review comments by following the instructions in the Call for Review. Through a form available from the Call for Review, Advisory Committee representatives should send comments to the Team-only list team-xforms-review@w3.org until 29th August 2003, 11pm EDT. Through the form, Advisory Committee representatives may also make their comments visible to the Membership (on w3c-ac-forum@w3.org for discussion or w3c-archive@w3.org).
After the review the Director will announce the document's disposition. This announcement should not be expected sooner than 21 days after the end of the review.
In addition to submitting them through the online review form, Advisory Committee representatives should send technical issues to the appropriate public mailing list for the XForms Working Group: www-forms-editor@w3.org. Discussion of these issues will take place on the public mailing list www-forms@w3.org. Alternatively, Advisory Committee representatives also have the option (through the online review form) of asking the XForms Working Group Team Contacts to forward their technical issues without attribution to the appropriate Working Group mailing list.
The public is invited to send comments about this document directly to www-forms-editor@w3.org. It is inappropriate to send discussion email to this address. Discussion of this document takes place on the public www-forms@w3.org.
The W3C XForms Working Group has released a public test suite for XForms 1.0 along with an implementation report.
Publication as a Proposed Recommendation does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than "work in progress."
Patent disclosures relevant to this specification may be found on the XForms Working Group's public patent disclosure page. As of this publication, the XForms Working Group are not aware of any royalty-bearing patents they believe to be essential to XForms 1.0.
This document has been produced by the W3C XForms Working Group as part of the XForms Activity within the W3C Interaction Domain. The authors of this document are the XForms Working Group participants.
A list of current known XForms Implementations is available.
A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
Available languages: The English version of this specification is the only normative version. However, for translations in other languages see XForms-translations
1 About the XForms 1.0
Specification
1.1 Background
1.2 Reading the
Specification
1.3 How the
Specification is Organized
1.4 Documentation
Conventions
2 Introduction to XForms
2.1 An
Example
2.2 Providing XML
Instance Data
2.3 Constraining Values
2.4 Multiple Forms per
Document
3 Document Structure
3.1 The XForms
Namespace
3.2 XForms Core Attribute
Collections
3.2.1 Common
Attributes
3.2.2 Linking
Attributes
3.2.3 Single-Node Binding
Attributes
3.2.4 Node-Set Binding
Attributes
3.2.5 Model Item Property
Attributes
3.3 The XForms Core
Module
3.3.1 The model Element
3.3.2 The instance
Element
3.3.3 The submission
Element
3.3.4 The bind
Element
3.4 The XForms MustUnderstand
Module
3.5 The XForms Extension
Module
3.5.1 The extension
Element
4 Processing Model
4.1 Events
Overview
4.2 Initialization Events
4.2.1 The xforms-model-construct
Event
4.2.2 The
xforms-model-construct-done Event
4.2.3 The xforms-ready Event
4.2.4 The xforms-model-destruct
Event
4.3 Interaction Events
4.3.1 The xforms-next and xforms-previous
Events
4.3.2 The xforms-focus Event
4.3.3 The xforms-help and xforms-hint
Events
4.3.4 The xforms-refresh Event
4.3.5 The xforms-revalidate
Event
4.3.6 The xforms-recalculate
Event
4.3.7 The xforms-rebuild Event
4.3.8 The xforms-reset Event
4.3.9 The xforms-submit Event
4.4 Notification Events
4.4.1 The DOMActivate Event
4.4.2 The xforms-value-changed
Event
4.4.3 The xforms-select and xforms-deselect
Events
4.4.4 The xforms-scroll-first and
xforms-scroll-last Events
4.4.5 The xforms-insert and xforms-delete
Events
4.4.6 The xforms-valid Event
4.4.7 The xforms-invalid Event
4.4.8 The DOMFocusIn Event
4.4.9 The DOMFocusOut Event
4.4.10 The xforms-readonly Event
4.4.11 The xforms-readwrite
Event
4.4.12 The xforms-required Event
4.4.13 The xforms-optional Event
4.4.14 The xforms-enabled Event
4.4.15 The xforms-disabled Event
4.4.16 The xforms-in-range Event
4.4.17 The xforms-out-of-range
Event
4.4.18 The xforms-submit-done
Event
4.4.19 The xforms-submit-error
Event
4.5 Error
Indications
4.5.1 The
xforms-binding-exception Event
4.5.2 The xforms-link-exception
Event
4.5.3 The xforms-link-error
Event
4.5.4 The
xforms-compute-exception Event
4.6 Event Sequencing
4.6.1 For input, secret, textarea,
range, or upload Controls
4.6.2 For output
Controls
4.6.3 For select or select1
Controls
4.6.4 For trigger
Controls
4.6.5 For submit
Controls
4.6.6 Sequence: Selection Without
Value Change
4.6.7 Sequence: Value Change with
Focus Change
4.6.8 Sequence: Activating a
Trigger
4.6.9 Sequence: Submission
5 Datatypes
5.1 XML Schema Built-in
Datatypes
5.2 XForms Datatypes
5.2.1 xforms:listItem
5.2.2 xforms:listItems
5.2.3 xforms:dayTimeDuration
5.2.4 xforms:yearMonthDuration
6 Model Item Properties
6.1 Model Item Property
Definitions
6.1.1 The type Property
6.1.2 The readonly
Property
6.1.3 The required
Property
6.1.4 The relevant
Property
6.1.5 The calculate
Property
6.1.6 The constraint
Property
6.1.7 The p3ptype
Property
6.2 Schema Constraints
6.2.1 Atomic Datatype
7 XPath Expressions in XForms
7.1 XPath Datatypes
7.2 Feature string for the
hasFeature method call
7.3 Instance Data
7.3.1 The
getInstanceDocument() Method
7.3.2 The rebuild() Method
7.3.3 The recalculate()
Method
7.3.4 The revalidate() Method
7.3.5 The refresh() Method
7.4 Evaluation Context
7.5 Binding
Expressions
7.5.1 Dynamic
Dependencies
7.5.2 Model Binding
Expressions
7.5.3 UI Binding
Expressions
7.5.4 UI Binding in other XML
vocabularies
7.5.5 Binding Examples
7.6 XForms
Core Function Library
7.7 Boolean Functions
7.7.1 The boolean-from-string()
Function
7.7.2 The if() Function
7.8 Number Functions
7.8.1 The avg() Function
7.8.2 The min() Function
7.8.3 The max() Function
7.8.4 The count-non-empty()
Function
7.8.5 The index() Function
7.9 String Functions
7.9.1 The property() Function
7.10 Date and Time Functions
7.10.1 The now() Function
7.10.2 The days-from-date()
Function
7.10.3 The
seconds-from-dateTime() Function
7.10.4 The seconds()
Function
7.10.5 The months()
Function
7.11 Node-set Functions
7.11.1 The instance() Function
7.12 Extension Functions
8 Form Controls
8.1 The
XForms Form Controls Module
8.1.1 Implementation Requirements Common
to All Form Controls
8.1.2 The input Element
8.1.3 The secret Element
8.1.4 The textarea Element
8.1.5 The output Element
8.1.6 The upload Element
8.1.7 The range Element
8.1.8 The trigger Element
8.1.9 The submit Element
8.1.10 The select Element
8.1.11 The select1 Element
8.2 Common Markup for Selection
Controls
8.2.1 The choices
Element
8.2.2 The item
Element
8.2.3 The value
Element
8.3 Additional Elements
8.3.1 The filename
Element
8.3.2 The mediatype
Element
8.3.3 The label Element
8.3.4 The help Element
8.3.5 The hint Element
8.3.6 The alert
Element
9 XForms User Interface
9.1 The
XForms Group Module
9.1.1 The group Element
9.2 The
XForms Switch Module
9.2.1 The switch Element
9.2.2 The case Element
9.2.3 The toggle Element
9.3 The
XForms Repeat Module
9.3.1 The repeat Element
9.3.2 Creating Repeating
Structures Via Attributes
9.3.3 The itemset
Element
9.3.4 The copy Element
9.3.5 The insert Element
9.3.6 The delete Element
9.3.7 The setindex
Element
9.3.8 Repeat Processing
9.3.9 Nested Repeats
9.3.10 User Interface
Interaction
10 XForms Actions
10.1 The
XForms Action Module
10.1.1 The action Element
10.1.2 The dispatch Element
10.1.3 The rebuild Element
10.1.4 The recalculate
Element
10.1.5 The revalidate
Element
10.1.6 The refresh Element
10.1.7 The setfocus Element
10.1.8 The load Element
10.1.9 The setvalue Element
10.1.10 The send Element
10.1.11 The reset Element
10.1.12 The message Element
10.1.13 Actions insert, delete and
setindex
11 Submit
11.1 The xforms-submit Event
11.2 Submission Options
11.3 Serialization as
application/xml
11.4 Serialization as
multipart/related
11.5 Serialization as
multipart/form-data
11.6 Serialization as
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
11.7 The
post, multipart-post, form-data-post, and urlencoded-post Submit
Methods
11.8 The
put Submit Method
11.9 The
get Submit Method
12 Conformance
12.1 Conformance Levels
12.1.1 XForms Full
12.2 Conformance Description
12.2.1 Conforming XForms
Processors
12.2.2 Conforming XForms
Documents
12.2.3 Conforming XForms
Generators
13 Glossary Of Terms
A Schema for XForms
A.1 Schema for XML Events
B References
B.1 Normative References
B.2 Informative
References
C Privacy Considerations
C.1 Using
P3P with XForms
D Recalculation Sequence Algorithm
D.1 Details on Creating
the Master Dependency Directed Graph
D.2 Details on Creating
the Pertinent Dependency Subgraph
D.3 Details on
Computing Individual Vertices
D.4 Example of
Calculation Processing
E Input Modes
E.1 inputmode Attribute Value
Syntax
E.2 User Agent Behavior
E.3 List
of Tokens
E.3.1 Script Tokens
E.3.2 Modifier Tokens
E.4 Relationship to XML Schema pattern
facets
E.5 Examples
F XForms and Styling
(Non-Normative)
F.1 Pseudo-classes
F.2 Pseudo-elements
F.3 Examples
G Complete XForms Examples
(Non-Normative)
G.1 XForms in XHTML
G.2 Editing Hierarchical
Bookmarks Using XForms
G.3 Survey
Using XForms and SVG
H Changelog (Non-Normative)
I Acknowledgments (Non-Normative)
J Production Notes (Non-Normative)